(Frankfurt) German finance and foreign ministers on Sunday spoke out against a ban on imports of gas, oil and coal from Russia as part of new sanctions linked to the invasion of Ukraine.
Updated yesterday at 6:27 p.m.
“We must be able to hold (the sanctions) over time,” explained the head of diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, to the ARD channel. “It is useless if in three weeks we discover that we only have a few days of electricity left in Germany and that we must therefore reverse these sanctions. »
“We are ready to pay a very, very high economic price”, but “if tomorrow, in Germany or in Europe, the lights go out, that will not stop the tanks”, added Mme Baerbock during an interview with the ZDF channel.
“If these sanctions put an end to this war, I would take them immediately,” observed the minister.
According to US Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken, the United States is “very actively discussing” the possibility of banning Russian oil imports.
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner was also skeptical.
“We must not limit our ability to hold out over time” and “deciding on an embargo unilaterally would have a negative impact on this ability”, he told the newspaper. Picture.
Such a ban on importing gas and oil from Russia “would threaten social peace” in Germany, said Friday the Ecologist Minister of the Economy Robert Habeck.
Germany imports from Russia 55% of its gas, 42% of its oil as well as coal, a dependency for which the government has been self-critical since the invasion of Ukraine, but which will take years to reduce .
Berlin is not the only EU capital to be very reluctant to embargo fossil fuels from Russia.
New G7 sanctions against Russia should now especially “affect the oligarchs” who “benefited from Putin”, estimated the Minister of Finance in an interview on the ARD channel.
The G7 countries announced in a press release on Friday their intention to impose “severe new sanctions” against Moscow, “in response to Russian aggression” against Ukraine.
“Those who took advantage of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and stole the wealth of the Russian people, including through corruption, cannot profit from their wealth in our Western democracies,” Lindner insisted.
Moscow must already deal with rigorous measures, aimed in particular at isolating the country from the international financial system.
On Thursday, the United States and the United Kingdom also blacklisted new oligarchs close to the Kremlin already targeted by the European Union.
One of the most tangible acts of the sanctions against the Russian elite was the seizure Thursday in the south of France of a megayacht, owned by a company linked to the boss of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.