Not included Penalties International due to war Ukraine Russia’s largest source of Russia’s energy exports to date.
Kiev says this means that European countries are financing the Kremlin’s war effort. Moscow Hundreds of millions of euros a day.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholes, who has been more cautious than other Western leaders in supporting Ukraine, is under increasing pressure to take a firm stand. Part of this pressure comes from within the ruling Social Democratic Alliance.
German Economy Minister Robert Hebeck told reporters before holding talks in Brussels with his colleagues in other countries. European union “Germany is not opposed to an oil embargo on Russia. Of course this is a huge burden, but we will be prepared to do so.”
“With coal and oil, it is now possible to drop Russian imports … you can not rule out higher fuel prices,” Christian Lindner Die Weld, finance minister for the pro-trade FDP, told the newspaper.
Prior to Russia’s occupation of Ukraine on February 24, Germany had reduced its share of Russian oil imports from 35 percent to 12 percent, but had previously said that it would take several months to phase out Russian crude oil in order to reduce its economic impact domestically.
The eastern part of Germany relies on fuel from a refinery owned by Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft, and stretches thousands of miles to Siberian oil fields through a Soviet-era “friendly” pipeline.
Europe’s complete abandonment of Russia’s natural gas would be more difficult than other oil sources.
Russia has demanded that its European customers pay for gas in rubles, which the EU has rejected.
Moscow last week reduced supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. EU ministers meet on Monday to discuss a joint response.
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