European Union leaders agreed late Monday to ban more than two-thirds of Russian oil imports, tightening economic screws on the country even as Moscow’s forces made gains in the eastern Donbas region of war-ravaged Ukraine.
The compromise deal, meant to punish Russia for its invasion three months ago, cuts “a huge source of financing for its war machine,” European Council chief Charles Michel tweeted.
“Maximum pressure on Russia to end the war,” he said.
Leaders of the 27-nation bloc had met to negotiate the long-sought deal earlier Monday in Brussels, amid concerns raised by Hungary and other neighboring countries reliant on Russian fuel.
The agreement also includes plans for the EU to send 9 billion euros in “immediate liquidity” to Kyiv, Michel announced.
On the ground, Russian forces pressed their offensive in Donbas.
“The situation in Severodonetsk is as complicated as possible,” Luhansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said on Telegram, saying the entire region was under continuous bombardment – “air bombs, and artillery, and tanks. Everything”.
Follow the latest updates below.
06:18 AM
Viktor Orban hails exemption in EU Russian oil ban
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has hailed the exemption in an EU Russian oil ban that allowed his country to keep receiving cheap crude from Moscow.
After weeks of negotiations between EU and Budapest, bloc leaders late Monday struck a compromise deal that banned Russian oil imports delivered by tankers, but left in place those received via pipelines – which is how landlocked Hungary gets the Russian crude key to its economy.
“Families can sleep peacefully tonight, we kept out the most hair-raising idea,” Mr Orban said in a video message posted on his Facebook page.
“We have reached an agreement that states that countries that receive oil through pipelines can continue to operate their economies under the previous conditions,” he said.
Mr Orban had threatened to veto the deal and warned that halting supplies would wreck his country’s economy.
A blanket import ban “would have been unbearable for us…like an atomic bomb, but we managed to avoid this,” said Mr Orban.
05:47 AM
Germany agrees 100bn euros fund to modernise army amid Russia threat
Germany’s government and conservative opposition have agreed a deal that will release 100 billion euros to modernise the army in the face of the Russian threat.
An agreement was reached late Sunday to create a special fund for military procurement that will also allow Berlin to achieve Nato’s target of spending two percent of GDP on defence.
The deal, which involves amending budgetary rules in the national constitution, was struck after weeks of difficult negotiations between the parties in the governing coalition and the conservatives of former chancellor Angela Merkel, representatives of these groups told AFP.
Three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a special budget of 100 billion euros to rearm the German military and modernise its outdated equipment over the next few years.
05:28 AM
Denmark votes on scrapping EU defence opt-out
After staying out of the European Union’s common defence policy for 30 years, Denmark votes on Wednesday in a referendum on whether to overturn its opt-out after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
More than 65 per cent of the country’s 4.3 million eligible voters are expected to vote in favour of dropping the exemption, the latest opinion poll published on Sunday suggested.
Analysts’ predictions have however been cautious, given the low voter turnout expected in a country that has often said “no” to further EU integration, most recently in 2015.
“We must always cast our ballots when there is a vote”, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged Danes in the final televised debate of the campaign on Sunday.
“I believe with all my heart that we have to vote yes. At a time when we need to fight for security in Europe, we need to be more united with our neighbours”, she said.
05:07 AM
Pictured: Latest scenes from the fighting in the Donbas
04:59 AM
Donbas in ‘extremely difficult’ situation
Ukraine’s Donbas is in an “extremely difficult” situation, President Volodymyr Zelensky said as Russian forces advance in the eastern region that has been under relentless bombardment.
“The situation in Donbas remains extremely difficult. The Russian army is trying to gather overwhelming forces in certain areas to put more and more pressure on our defenders. There, in Donbas, the maximum combat power of the Russian army is now gathered,” Mr Zelensky says in his nightly address.
04:40 AM
‘Assault on Severodonetsk taking longer than Russian forces hoped’
Russian forces have seized control of about a third of the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk, but their assault was taking longer than they had hoped, according to a Moscow-backed separatist leader quoted in a TASS news agency report.
Russian shelling has reduced much of Severodonetsk to ruins and Russian troops have entered the city’s southeastern and northeastern fringes, but the Ukrainian defence has slowed the wider Russian campaign across the Donbas region.
“We can say already that a third of Severodonetsk is already under our control,” TASS quoted Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the Luhansk People’s Republic, as saying in a report on Tuesday morning.
Mr Pasechnik told the Russian state news agency that fighting was raging in the city, but Russian forces were not advancing as rapidly as might have been hoped.
