EU eyes sanctions targeting Nord Stream and banking sector to pressure Putin

TIRANA, Albania — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday that the European Union is working on a major package of new sanctions against the Kremlin with talks between Russia and Ukraine looking unlikely to yield progress.

"We want peace and we have to apply pressure," she told reporters as she arrived at a summit of the European Political Community in the Albanian capital of Tirana.

Von der Leyen said the EU is considering sanctions that are more ambitious than a new round of measures adopted on Wednesday. She proposed targeting the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines linking Russia to Europe, Russia's banking sector and the so-called shadow fleet of aging vessels with obscure ownership and unknown insurance that Moscow uses to skirt oil sanctions.

The head of the EU executive also said the Commission would look to lower the oil price cap, a limit on the sales price for Russian crude oil which is decided at G7 level.

Targeting Russia's energy and banking sectors would have a "real impact" on the Kremlin, but doing so would be tricky because of Hungarian opposition, an EU diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss the preparations, told POLITICO earlier this week.

Asked by POLITICO whether the United States was on board with the new raft of sanctions, von der Leyen said she was "in close contact with Senator [Lindsey] Graham," the U.S. Republican senator who is a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Graham has proposed a package of punitive 500 percent tariffs on Russia.

"We are very much aligned on the fields where the sanctions must be," von der Leyen said.

While Graham is a Donald Trump ally, the U.S. president has not publicly indicated he is ready to enact such punishing sanctions on Russia. Trump told reporters on Thursday there would be no progress toward peace in Ukraine until he meets with Putin, as much-hyped Moscow-Kyiv talks in Turkey turned into a huge nothingburger.

Delegations from the two countries sat down in Istanbul on Friday for the first direct talks since shortly after the start of Russia's invasion in 2022, but Putin's decision to skip talks and send a lower-level delegations has been read as an unwillingness to engage in peace discussions

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte slammed Putin's decision to snub the talks as "a mistake," while the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said the Russian leader was "playing games."

“If it turns out the Russian delegation is just theatrical ... the world must respond," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his address in Tirana, before the talks in Turkey concluded. “There needs to be a strong reaction including sanctions against the [Russian] energy sector and banks."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron said they spoke with Trump Friday and were now, in Starmer's words "closely aligning and coordinating our responses." Both Macron and Starmer called Russia's position "unacceptable."

Macron said at a press conference following the summit that Trump planned to hold conversations "in the next couple of hours or couple of days" with "Russian side to clarify what had happened [in Istanbul] and move forward."

Gordon Repinski contributed reporting. Clea Caulcutt reported from Tirana and Koen Verhelst from Brussels.