The European Union is expected to consider new sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, April 6, amid increasingly vocal calls for an embargo on Russian oil and gas, the Financial Times reported.
The EU is preparing to impose additional sanctions against Moscow after reports of atrocities after Russian troops retreated from Kyiv's outskirts.
"According to a diplomat familiar with the plans, EU ambassadors are expected to discuss the new package of measures on Wednesday," the publication notes.
Future measures proposed by some member states are said to "include additional individual sanctions, a ban on Russian ships using EU ports, additional export restrictions and an embargo on energy supplies such as coal, oil or gas - which Ukraine has long demanded but about which some major European economies have previously resisted."
Calls for sanctions against Russian energy exports, on which the EU is heavily dependent, have become louder, the paper said.
In Italy, one of the EU countries most dependent on Russian gas, Enrico Letta, head of the center-left Democratic Party, the junior partner in Prime Minister Mario Draghi's national unity government, called for a "complete oil and gas embargo on Russia."
Buying Russian oil and gas is "financing war crimes," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said. The Baltic state said it was the first in the EU to stop importing gas from Moscow.
The paper noted that the promise to step up punitive measures against Russia followed the West's sharp condemnation of alleged Russian war crimes against unarmed Ukrainian civilians in the recently liberated areas around Kyiv.
