Ukraine has welcomed the European Union’s agreement to impose new sanctions on Russia on Friday, but Slovakia’s threat to veto the package highlighted discord between Kyiv and populist governments in Bratislava and Budapest which want to preserve economic ties with Moscow.
The EU’s 18th package of sanctions against Russia expands restrictions on Moscow’s finance and energy sectors, introduces a moving price cap on its oil exports and blacklists 105 tankers in a “shadow fleet” that it uses to bypass sanctions imposed since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three-and-a-half years ago.
“We are putting more pressure on Russia’s military industry, Chinese banks that enable sanctions evasion, and blocking tech exports used in drones,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. “We will keep raising the costs, so stopping the aggression becomes the only path forward for Moscow.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the new sanctions were “essential and timely, especially now, as a response to the fact that Russia has intensified the brutality of the strikes on our cities and villages”.
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Yet the sanctions only passed after Slovakia finally lifted a threat to veto the package, mimicking an approach taken on other occasions by Hungary, another neighbour of Ukraine that opposes sanctions on Russia and western arms supplies to Kyiv.
Slovak prime minister Robert Fico said he blocked the sanctions six times over concerns about a separate EU plan to phase out all the bloc’s imports of Russian gas by 2028, which he claims could leave his country short of fuel and facing spiralling energy costs.
Mr Fico said on Thursday night he would let the sanctions pass after receiving “confirmed guarantees” and promises on potential “crisis solutions” from the European Commission.
He and his ally, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, frequently try to stymie or water down EU sanctions against Russia, which they say damage their countries more than the Kremlin and will not end the invasion of Ukraine.
Through a political system and state media that his ruling Fidesz party controls, Mr Orbán has also launched a campaign to demonise Ukraine, claiming its defensive war and its bid to join the EU pose a threat to the welfare of Hungarians – including the large ethnic Hungarian community in western Ukraine.
Hungary imposed entry bans on three Ukrainian military officials this week after accusing conscription officers in western Ukraine of beating to death an ethnic Hungarian man. Mr Orbán called for EU sanctions against those allegedly responsible.
Ukrainian officials say the Hungarian claims are baseless. The military said the man died of a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot, several weeks after deserting his unit and later being admitted to a psychiatric clinic.
“Hungary’s decision to ban three Ukrainian military officials from entering its territory is unfounded and absurd,” Kyiv’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said. “We reject Hungary’s manipulations and we will not tolerate such disrespect for our military.”
The Hungarian government’s hostility towards Ukraine is likely to intensify with the approach of parliamentary elections next year.
Mr Orbán is trailing in opinion polls behind opposition leader Péter Magyar and now claims – without evidence – that his rival would be a mere “puppet” of liberal forces in Brussels and Kyiv.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of his country’s security council, said the latest sanctions imposed by the “European halfwits” would fail and that “strikes against targets in so-called Ukraine, including Kyiv, will only intensify”.
In a post on social media, he called hatred “a powerful weapon” and urged Russians to “learn to hate [Europeans] as much as our ancestors did”.
