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The EU joined the G7 on Friday in agreeing to cap the price of Russian oil to starve the Kremlin of resources for the war in Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin said strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure were “inevitable”.
The $60-a-barrel price cap, previously agreed at a political level with the United States and the G7 group of rich democracies, will come into effect with an EU embargo on Russian crude from Monday.
The embargo will prevent tanker shipments of Russian crude to the EU, which account for two-thirds of imports, potentially stripping Russia of billions of euros from its war chest.
Poland refused to back the price cap plan over concerns the ceiling was too high, before its ambassador to the bloc confirmed Warsaw’s agreement on Friday night, allowing the measure to be made official this weekend.
The Czech EU presidency and diplomats from other member states announced that the deal had been confirmed and that the bureaucratic procedure for its implementation was underway.
The price cap is designed to make it harder to circumvent sanctions by selling outside the EU.
Poland’s ambassador to the bloc, Andrzej Sados, also said Brussels would take into account Poland and the Baltic states’ suggestions for a “painful and expensive” ninth round of sanctions against Moscow.
– Infrastructure strikes ‘inevitable’ –
After suffering a humiliating defeat in what has become Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II, Russia began targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in October, causing massive blackouts.
President Vladimir Putin said Russian strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure were “inevitable” in his first talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz since mid-September.
“Such measures have become a forced and inevitable response to Kiev’s provocative attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure,” Putin told Scholz, according to a readout of the Kremlin phone calls.
The Kremlin leader specifically referred to the October attack on the bridge connecting Crimea, which is annexed to Moscow, and the Russian mainland.
During the hour-long conversation, Scholz “urged the Russian president to reach a diplomatic solution as soon as possible, including the withdrawal of Russian troops,” said the German leader’s spokesman, Steffen Hebstreit.
Putin called on Berlin to “reconsider its approaches” and accused the West of pursuing “destructive” policies in Ukraine, the Kremlin said, noting that its political and financial aid meant Kiev “completely rejects the idea of any negotiations”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out any talks with Russia while Putin is in power shortly after the Kremlin claimed it had annexed several Ukrainian regions.
– Talking from the table –
The Kremlin also indicated Moscow was in no mood for talks on Ukraine, after US President Joe Biden said he would be willing to sit down with Putin if the Russian leader really wanted to end the fighting.
“What did President Biden actually say?” He said that negotiations are possible only after Putin leaves Ukraine,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that Moscow was “certainly” not ready to accept those conditions.
Russian strikes destroyed nearly half of Ukraine’s energy system and left millions in the cold and dark at the start of winter.
According to the latest estimates from Kiev, Mihajlo Podoljak, Zelenskiy’s adviser, said that as many as 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in the fighting.
Both Moscow and Kiev are suspected of minimizing their losses to avoid damaging morale.
Top US general Mark Milley said last month that more than 100,000 Russian military personnel had been killed or wounded in Ukraine, with Kiev’s forces likely suffering similar casualties.
– ‘We are not defeated’ –
The fighting in Ukraine has also claimed the lives of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions to flee their homes.
Those who remained in the country had to deal with an emergency power outage as the authorities tried to reduce the pressure on the energy infrastructure.
In an attempt to lift spirits in the capital Kyiv, musicians played a classical music concert on Thursday with hundreds of LED candles lighting up the stage.
“We thought it was a good idea to save energy,” Irina Mykolaenko, one of the organizers of the concert, told AFP.
She said they want to spread “inspiration, light and love” and “to tell people that we are not defeated.”
Ukrainian officials said they expect a new wave of Russian attacks soon.
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