Firefighters extinguish a fire after a Russian attack in the Kyiv region amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, July 10, 2025. On Friday, the European Union agreed to impose its 18th package of sanctions against Russia. Photo by State Emergency Service of Ukraine/UPI | License Photo
The European Union on Friday reached an agreement to impose its 18th round of sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine after Slovakia ended its protest.
The package targets Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of ships as well as the energy and banking sectors. It also lowers the oil cap from $60 to $45 a barrel and prohibiting the EU from accessing Russian Nord Stream pipelines.
The EU is also, for the first time, sanctioning a flag registry and Russian oil company Rosneft’s largest refinery in India.
“We are standing firm,” the EU’s top diplomat, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, said in a statement.
“We will keep raising the costs, so stopping the aggression becomes the only path forward for Moscow.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen celebrated its adoption online, saying with the new package, “We are striking at the heart of Russia’s war machine.”
“The pressure is on,” she said. “It will stay on until Putin ends this war.”
The EU has been hitting Russia with sanctions since it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, but they have significantly ramped up since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It has since blacklisted more than 2,400 people and entities with its 17 adopted packages, along with other punitive measures.
The 18th package was blocked for days by Slovakia, which was protesting a separate EU proposal to phase out all Russian fuel supplies by 2028. Slovakian President Robert Fico had requested an exemption to allow it to fulfill its contract with Russia’s Gazprom until it expires in 2034.
But he relinquished his request late Thursday in a video published to Facebook.
All 27 members of the bloc need to vote unanimously for the sanctions to be adopted.
“We welcome the European Union’s latest sanctions package and are grateful to all who have made it possible,” Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s new prime minister, said in a statement.
“By targeting the ships, the banks and the networks that sustain Russia’s war, this package strengthens the pressures where it counts. There is more to be done. But each measure taken with clarity and resolve helps bring Russia’ war closer to its end.”
Nearly 22,000 entities and individuals have been hit with sanctions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to sanctions analysis platform Castellum, making it by far the most sanctioned country in the world.
The EU has imposed the fourth-most sanctions against Russia, following the United States, Canada and Switzerland.
