EU maintains pressure after slamming US for lifting sanctions on Russian oil exports as Middle East war bites.

The European Union has voted to renew sanctions against individuals and entities supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine, as Russian forces continued to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure, killing six people in the Zaporizhia and Kyiv regions.

The EU Council announced that the bloc’s 27 member states had agreed on Saturday to extend sanctions targeting some 2,600 individuals and entities with measures like travel restrictions and asset freezes until September 15, breaking an earlier deadlock caused by Hungary and Slovakia’s opposition to the move.

The extension of sanctions came one day after EU Council chief Antonio Costa slammed the United States for lifting sanctions on Russian oil exports, saying on X that weakening restrictions increased “Russian resources to wage the war of aggression against Ukraine”, with a knock-on impact on European security.

The measure was announced as Russia hammered Ukraine with missiles and drones on Saturday, killing five people and injuring 15 in the Kyiv region surrounding the capital, according to regional military administrator Mykola Kalashnyk.

The city of Zaporizhzhia was also hit by Russian-guided bombs, killing one person and injuring three, said the governor of the southeastern region, Ivan Fedorov. Photos posted online showed parts of buildings reduced to rubble.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s main target was energy infrastructure outside the capital Kyiv, but that the Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Mykolaiv regions were also targeted in an attack that included about 430 drones and 68 missiles, most of which were downed by air defences.

Russia’s winter attacks on Ukraine have left swaths of major cities without power or heating, as Moscow’s troops continue their offensive amid demands Kyiv cede more territory in the east. Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said on Saturday that consumers in six regions were without electricity.

Ukraine’s forces have targeted Russian strategic infrastructure such as oil refineries, depots and terminals in long-range strikes. On Saturday, Ukraine’s military said that it had struck the Afipsky oil refinery and Port Kavkaz in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.

Putin ‘exploiting’ Middle East distraction

Saturday’s fighting came as the Iran conflict has distracted international attention from a US-backed peace push in the four-year war, which Kyiv says Moscow has no interest in ending.

Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever called on Saturday for the EU to be mandated by its member states to negotiate with Russia as it became apparent amid spiking oil prices caused by the Iran war that the US was easing pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Since we are not capable of threatening Putin by sending weapons to Ukraine, and we cannot choke him economically without the support of the United States, there is only one method left: making a deal,” he told the Belgian newspaper L’Echo.

EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas has said in the past that the bloc must first reach an agreement on what is expected from Russia before directly approaching Putin, formulating its own “maximalist demands”.

However, the bloc’s inability to reach a common position was highlighted during the EU Council’s recent deliberations on extending sanctions.

Hungary and Slovakia, which have been sparring with Ukraine over blocked Russian oil flows through the Druzhba pipeline, had earlier opposed the extension of the restrictions, reportedly calling for some Russian oligarchs to be removed from the list of offenders.

Reacting earlier this week to soaring oil prices caused by the war in Iran, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged the EU to suspend sanctions on Russian energy.

Posting on X, Zelenskyy said, “Russia will try to exploit the war in the Middle East to cause even greater destruction here in Europe, in Ukraine.”