EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says the bloc's sixth package of sanctions against Russia, which include major cuts to Russian oil imports to the bloc, will not only impact the amount of crude Moscow will sell abroad, it will also force down the price it can ask.
"We are the most important client for Russia," Borrell told reporters as he arrived for the second day of meetings between EU leaders on the war in Ukraine.
"The purpose is to make Russia have less financial resources to feed its war machine," he added.
Late on May 30, the bloc's leaders agreed to the sanctions package, which is expected to cut EU imports of Russian oil by more than two-thirds.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said the sanctions must include oil, “so that Russia feels the price for what it is doing against Ukraine and the whole of Europe, and so that you finally become independent of Russia's energy weapons.”
