.png)
Every barrel of oil and ton of gas is “soaked in the blood” of those killed, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament said. Lithuania’s foreign minister warned other E.U. countries not to become “accomplices.”
On Monday, with scenes of the devastation splashed across newspapers, French President Emmanuel Macron said indications of “war crimes” in Ukraine warranted new sanctions and that he will work with Germany and other E.U. partners to move forward on the issue on Russian oil and coal.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Sunday that Bucha had put energy sanctions on the table, but other Germany leaders later suggested an energy embargo is unlikely — prompting Poland’s prime minister call out Berlin for being an E.U. holdout.
The whole debate raises uncomfortable questions about where the E.U. draws its ‘red lines’ on Russian energy — or if those lines exist at all.
“If there is a red line, it probably hasn’t been crossed for Germany,” said Marcel Dirsus, a German political scientist and non-resident fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University.
In the weeks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the E.U. has worked with the U.S. and other allies to hit Russia with a series of sanctions packages and other penalties, but it continues to buy Russian oil and gas.
When the U.S. and U.K. cut imports, the E.U. argued that it could not afford to match the moves because the bloc is vastly more dependent on Russia energy. Europe imports about 40 percent of its gas and more than a quarter of its oil from Russia; the United States and Britain import far less.
Rather than stop the purchases immediately, the E.U. vowed to wean off Russian imports, promising to cut gas imports by two-thirds this year as part of a gradual move away from Russian fossil fuels.
The Baltic states and some eastern European countries have called for the E.U. to do more, while major E.U. economies, including Germany, Italy and France, have opposed calls to go further.
But the scenes from Bucha could be a turning point. Italy’s foreign minister said Monday that the country will not veto sanctions on Russian gas.
“It is very clear that there are indications of war crimes,” Macron said in an interview with France Inter radio station. “I don’t think we can let it go. … What happened in Bucha imposes a new package of sanctions.”
Macron said more forceful sanctions are necessary to prevent similar devastation in other parts of Ukraine. “We are going to coordinate with our European partners, in particular with Germany,” he said. “In regards to coal and oil, we need to be able to move forward.”
Macron, who is up for reelection, has advocated in favor of tougher measures on Russia, even as he has continued to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks.
In France, the debate over sanctioning oil and gas imports from Russia comes less than one week before the first round of the presidential election this Sunday, which according to polls could lead to a runoff vote between Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Both Macron and Le Pen have seen their standing in the polls improve in the wake of the Ukraine war, with Macron benefiting from his role on the international stage, and Le Pen portraying herself as being more attuned to voters’ concerns over how the war will affect their purchasing power.
Le Pen on Monday echoed Macron’s comments on Bucha, characterizing the destruction as a probable “war crime,” but she has called for more restraint in sanctioning Russia.
The far-right leader, who was long seen as an ally of Russian President Putin, said last month that France “must choose sanctions that are not sanctions against the purchasing power of the French.”
France depends less on Russian gas than neighboring Germany does, but the ripple effects of a halt in imports from Russia could still have significant impact on Europe’s deeply intertwined economies.
The revelations renewed pressure on German leaders, who vowed to mount a serious response but are still debating how far they are willing to go.
On Sunday, the defense minister, Christine Lambrecht, said the E.U. should discuss halting gas supplies from Russia. And the youth wings of the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party — two parties to Germany’s three-way coalition government — threw their weight behind stopping deliveries of Russian fossil fuels.
But on Monday, a spokesman for the economics and climate ministry reiterated that an immediate embargo was not realistic. “Unfortunately it is the case that Germany is strongly dependent on Russian imports, and this was not reduced in the past 10 years but rather increased,” the spokeswoman, Beate Baron, told reporters.
And as calls mounted for Germany to cut itself off from Russian energy supplies, Monday also brought a stark reminder of the competing pressure on the government. Christian Sewing, the Deutsche Bank CEO and president of the Association of German Banks, or BdB, said halting imports of oil and gas would make a recession “virtually unavoidable.”
The economics and climate minister, Robert Habeck of the Green party, said new sanctions could target people around Putin as well as Russian financial institutions. He also said Germany should expand its weapons deliveries to Ukraine — a remarkable position for a leader of the Green party given its pacifist roots.
The government declined to comment on allegations from Poland’s prime minister that Germany is the main roadblock to tougher sanctions.
Meanwhile, in a sign of how images from Bucha were inflaming criticism of past policy toward Russia, former German chancellor Angela Merkel answered aspersions cast on her by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over his country’s NATO aspirations. A spokeswoman for Merkel said she stood by her decisions related to the alliance’s 2008 summit in Bucharest, when Ukraine was denied an immediate path to membership.
English (United States) · 
Turkish (Turkey) ·