BRUSSELS, Belgium
EU leaders wrapped up an emergency summit early Friday with agreement to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine by imposing "severe" sanctions targeting its financial, energy and transport sectors.
European Commission chief
Ursula von der Leyen told a media conference afterwards they "will have
maximum impact on the Russian economy and the political elite".
The summit started late Thursday, the day Russia
started blasting military targets and sending tanks and paratroopers into its
pro-Western neighbour Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed
the gathering by video link, telling European presidents and prime ministers
that "he does not know if he will be able to speak with us another
time," Luxembourg's leader Xavier Bettel recounted as he left.
Von der Leyen said the packet of sanctions -- the
second adopted this week by the EU -- is "targeting 70 percent of the
Russian banking market, but also key state-owned companies including the field
of defence".
She did not go into details, but a list drawn up by
her commission, seen by AFP, proposed adding two Russian private banks -- Alfa
Bank and Bank Otkritie -- to entities sanctioned by the EU.
It also called for Russians to be prohibited from
putting deposits over 100,000 euros ($112,000) in EU banks or from purchasing
euro-denominated securities.
Von der Leyen said the measures "will increase
Russia's borrowing costs, raise inflation and gradually erode Russia's
industrial base".
Energy sector targets of the sanctions included an
export ban on equipment and technology Russia needs to upgrade its oil
refineries.
An export ban on aircraft and plane parts to
Russian airlines would also "degrade a key sector of Russia's economy and
the country's connectivity," von der Leyen said.
"The fourth point is we are limiting Russia's
access to crucial technology -- we will hit Russia's access to important
technologies it needs to build a prosperous future such as semiconductors or cutting-edge
technologies," she said.
"And finally, on visas, diplomats and related
groups and business people will no longer have privileged access to the
European Union."
The latest sanctions will come into effect once
legal texts are drawn up that are then formally approved by member states'
foreign ministers and published in the EU's official journal.
That was expected to happen as early as Friday or
Saturday.
The leaders also discussed how to ramp up political,
economic and humanitarian support for Ukraine.
While EU agreement on the outline of the sanctions
was rapid, there were clear divisions over the option of kicking Russia out of
the SWIFT network that the world's banks use to securely send messages in order
to carry out transactions.
Zelensky has urged the West to use that lever,
which has already been implemented to devastating effect against Iran's banking
sector.
But US President Joe Biden, speaking in Washington
as the EU summit started, said: "It is always an option but right now that's
not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take."
That assessment was borne out by German Chancellor
Olaf Scholz, who suggested as he arrived for the summit that SWIFT and other
measures should be kept "for a situation where it might be necessary, for
other things".
Other EU leaders, though, chafed at that stance.
"Talk is cheap... we have to be united around
massive sanctions, severe sanctions," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz
Morawiecki said.
Latvia's prime minister, Krisjanis Karins, said:
"SWIFT, I think it's the very right direction, I think we should go in
that direction", but only if other jurisdictions outside Europe also
adopted that tactic.
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