Why Are EU Leaders Losing Faith in Economic Sanctions on Russia?

Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that the 27-member European Union bloc may have rewarded Russia with increased imports despite economic sanctions due to the Ukraine war.

It is rare for the 27-member bloc to admit its mistakes publicly. So why is the recent startling admission that the EU got it wrong about Russian sanctions?

Verhofstadt recently said that EU sanctions on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine had failed miserably, adding that the EU is only “rewarding” Russia by increasing imports from the country.

The PM’s admission on Twitter was a bombshell for the EU, with Verhofstadt, who served as Belgian prime minister from 1999 to 2008 and has been a member of the European Parliament since 2009, claiming that the impact of the nine EU sanction packages on Moscow was “less than zero.”

The former prime minister asserted that the bloc’s attempts to punish Russia backfired; “We are rewarding Russia for its war against us!”

 

Common Belief

Verhofstadt also noted that most EU member states, including Germany, France, Italy, and Poland, have already increased imports from Russia. Overall, only seven EU members bought less from Russia than they had previously.

This recognition by this prominent member of the European Parliament is remarkable on many levels and will not pass without notice from the European Parliament, as well as the powerful European Commission.

It will be seen as a wake-up call among hardline supporters of European federalism that something must be done to pull the EU out of the hole it has caught itself.

Much of the blame can of course be placed on EU dignitaries, who indulge in their own problems in closed rooms. Much can also be said about marginalized media, which do not report news in line with the EU line, only intensifying the blind dogma of EU figures who have brought so much poverty and misery to Europeans.

But this recognition must be put in context because this will give observers an understanding of what to expect from EU leaders in the coming months.

A clash between the European Union and the United States is almost inevitable, as the economies of European countries deteriorate further due to Biden’s new tax breaks on businesses there, negatively affecting European companies struggling to survive in the market.

The United States, which has become one of the diesel suppliers to Europe, has been suffering for several months from a decline in supply due to the inability of its refineries to meet demand and declining investment in refining.

US diesel inventories fell by the end of last year to the lowest level since 1952, according to data from the New York Times.

Washington faces challenges related to replacing Russian diesel with diesel produced in European markets, and providing this commodity to the American citizen at comfortable prices.

A report by energy analytics firm Vortexa last week shows that European diesel imports from Russia reached 770,000 barrels per day in January, the highest level since March 2022.

This rise is due to European energy companies hedging ahead of the European decision’s entry into force, by buying large quantities of it until other sources are found to import it.

 

Elections on Stake

For Verhofstadt, with only a few months to go until the EU elections, he fears that there will be a large vote of no confidence in opinion polls from the main parties, offset by a larger vote of far-right groups in the European Parliament.

Verhofstadt knows that if the EU wants to avoid this, it must now move on to a new strategy.

The problem is that many Western leaders believe Putin is running out of military supplies. This narrative fits neatly with the belief of many Western elites that the war of attrition is, in fact, on their side.

The new BRICS members are lining up to join the bloc, which is said to be a Russian-led organization.

More and more Global South countries are joining Russia every week, and Russia does not seem to have any strong initiative to undo all these spoils of war.

What European leaders should ask themselves is how to reorganize themselves with Moscow and get a deal in Ukraine that immediately strengthens the economies of EU countries and reduces focus on the win-or-lose scenario in Ukraine. What is needed is a ceasefire; only then can talks begin.

But the question is: Are the West and its corrupt partisan media capable of conceding? In many ways, the blame should be attributed to the bad reporting of the Western media and how it trapped Western elites in a corner from which they could not get out.

It is remarkable that for several days on the Daily Mail website in the United Kingdom, a story remained about Putin’s desire to end the war in Ukraine, reach out to the West for talks, and also continue to publish stories about Putin’s ill health, suggesting that time is not on Russia’s side.

Any objective coverage of the situation that can be provided by non-Western media—perhaps led by the Russian television channel RT—has been obscured, so the media (as well as the public) have no alternative perspective.

Unfortunately, the 400 million citizens who make up the population of the European Union, who will vote in the summer of 2024, cannot realize that the main reason for the EU and its governments’ ban on RT was not some idealistic moral principles because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but because of a glaring lack of trust in their own policies.

So erasing any dissenting narrative was just a ploy of self-preservation. The EU had wanted to implement the move years ago but was afraid of the humiliation that would have followed.

European Union Parliamentary members like Verhofstadt are obsessed with just one thing: the comfortable lifestyle that the EU offers them.

Survival is now the EU’s only issue, and Verhofstadt knows that the catastrophic mistake of Russian sanctions and support for the US-led war will come at a high price for the EU project. Is there a listener?