Karl Nehammer visits Moscow as EU leaders discuss sanctions on Russian oil
The Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer’s visit to Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday is intended to tell the Russian president that he has “lost the war morally”, Austria’s foreign minister has said, as the EU discusses how to impose sanctions on Russian oil.
On a day of brisk diplomatic activity, Nehammer is due to become the first western leader to meet Putin since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraineon 24 February.
In Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers are discussing how to help Ukraine further, while Joe Biden will hold talks with Narendra Modi, where the US president is expected to press India’s leader not to increase exports of Russian crude.
Austria’s foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, said someone needed to tell Putin the truth. “It makes a difference to be face to face and tell him what the reality is: that this president has de facto lost the war morally,” Schallenberg said ahead of the meeting with his EU counterparts.
“It should be in his own interest that someone tells him the truth. I think it is important and we owe it to ourselves if we want to save human lives.”
Nehammer said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whom he met on Saturday, had been informed of his Moscow trip, as had the EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Austria, which is not a member of Nato, is calling for humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and the full investigation of war crimes.
Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, sounded sceptical about further talks with Putin, after a series of high-profile visits by EU leaders failed to deter the Russian leader from launching his attack. He said: “I have seen a lot of effort by many leaders, by Emmanuel Macron, to try and see whether they can talk to the guy. I personally have no reason to believe that he is ‘talkable’.”
The visit comes as Zelenskiy warned that Russian troops would move to “even larger operations” in the east of Ukraine. In his nightly video address on Sunday, Zelenskiy also accused Russia of trying to evade responsibility for war crimes. “When people lack the courage to admit their mistakes, apologise, adapt to reality and learn, they turn into monsters. And when the world ignores it, the monsters decide that it is the world that has to adapt to them. Ukraine will stop all this,” he said.
Zelenskiy said he had discussed with Scholz how to strengthen sanctions against Russia, adding: “I am glad to note that the German position has recently changed in favour of Ukraine. I consider it absolutely logical.”
Russia said on Monday that it had destroyed air defence systems in Ukraine over the weekend, in what appeared to be a renewed push to gain air superiority and take out weapons Kyiv has described as crucial, before a broad new offensive in the east.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said there were “massive indications of war crimes”, adding that while “the courts will have to decide”, it was “central to secure all evidence”.
EU ministers met Karim Khan, chief prosector of the international criminal court in The Hague, and Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine’s chief prosector, who is tasked with overseeing nearly 2,000 cases of war crimes committed by Russian occupying forces.
Several ministers confirmed the EU was drawing up further sanctions against Russia, targeting lucrative oil sales, although it remains unclear how quickly the bloc will move in cutting imports of Russian crude. The EU is banning Russian coal from August, but Germany opposes an immediate oil embargo.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, confirmed that the European Commission, which is responsible for the sanctions proposals, was “now working on ensuring that oil is part of the next sanctions package”.
“The European Union is spending hundreds of millions of euros on importing oil from Russia, that is certainly contributing to financing this war. We need to cut off that financing,” Coveney said. “The sooner that can happen the better.”
The Swedish foreign minister, Ann Linde, said: “I think we might make progress when it comes to oil. We are constantly developing our positions and more countries are understanding how important this is.”
The bloc, which imports 27% of its oil from Russia, is likely to argue over the phaseout period. Germany has pledged to phase out Russian coal and oil by the end of the year, but said ending dependence on Russian gas would take until at least 2024.
Referring to these plans, Baerbock said: “We need a joint, coordinated plan to completely phase out fossil fuels, to be able to withdraw as a European Union.”
The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, deplored the “brutal, brutal aggression of Russian troops against the civilian population”, but declined to elaborate on further EU action against Russia, stating: “sanctions are always on the table.”
The US, which has been pressing Berlin to sever Russian energy ties, is expected to make the same argument to India later on Monday. India has not imposed sanctions on Russia. Taking advantage of low prices, India has bought 13m barrels of Russian crude oil since the invasion of Ukraine began, compared with 16m barrels in all of 2021, according to Reuters.
Biden has accused India of being the only “somewhat shaky” country on Ukraine in the Quad group of nations, which includes Japan and Australia. “President Biden will continue our close consultations on the consequences of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine and mitigating its destabilizing impact on global food supply and commodity markets,” the White House said in a statement.
As western sanctions continue to bite, a Kremlin spokesperson said there were no objective grounds for a Russian debt default and that such an outcome would occur only if engineered by others.
