Keep looking for more measures, Dutch PM says after 9th sanction package against Russia

The European Union laboriously scraped together the ninth package of sanctions against Russia. Prime Minister Mark Rutte is “very much in favor” of continuing to look for new punitive measures against the country that invaded Ukraine, he said after the EU summit in Brussels.

The EU is punishing another nearly 200 individuals and organizations for their part in the war against Ukraine. Three more banks, mining, and Russian propaganda will also be hit.

The new punitive measures include the Russian army, the defense industry, and political parties. Assets they have in the EU will be frozen, and Europeans will no longer be allowed to do business with them. The same fate will befall dozens more ministers, parliamentarians, governors, and military officers.

The EU will also ban investments in Russian mining and further restrict the sale of drones and other warfare supplies to Russia. The European Commission also wants to take four Russian channels off the air because they allegedly spread propaganda.

The ninth series of punitive measures for the ongoing Russian violence in Ukraine is “a tiny sanctions package,” Rutte noted. “It’s not very harsh.” But he doesn’t want to disparage it because “it is the ninth package, so of course, the big things have happened.” The EU “is also starting to run out of steam.”

Nevertheless, “you have to keep looking for what else you can do,” Rutte stressed. “Toward maybe - you don’t know - a tenth package, an eleventh package.”

The measures agreed upon by the EU on Thursday are the highest achievable at the moment, the Dutch Prime Minister said. According to him, they’ve held nothing back in case Russia intensifies the violence, for example.

It took a long time for the EU leaders to agree on the sanctions. Poland and Lithuania felt that they did not go far enough and counted too many exceptions. For example, the Netherlands negotiated space for the port of Rotterdam to transit artificial fertilizers, which are vital to starvation-stricken Africa.

The EU countries agreed on Thursday evening. The measures will be formally stamped on Friday.