European Union leaders are expected to warn Moscow that hostile action against Ukraine would trigger unprecedented sanctions as they meet in Brussels amid concerns that Russia’s military buildup near the border could prepare for an invasion of Ukraine — something Russian officials have denied.
Besides tensions over the Ukraine-Russia border situation, the December 16 summit is also set to be dominated by the ongoing migrant crisis along the bloc’s border with Belarus, as well as the coronavirus pandemic and energy prices.
Speaking to reporters upon entering the meeting, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said the 27-member bloc shouldn’t underestimate the Russian threat and had to “do everything to prevent the worst scenario.”
“We have enough tools to stop Russia from its aggressive behavior…we have to talk about sectorial and also economic sanctions,” Nauseda said.
According to new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the EU leaders “will underscore again that the inviolability of borders is an important basis for peace in Europe, and that together we will do everything that this inviolability endures.”
The EU has already imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over its seizure and illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March 2014, and over its backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine in an ongoing conflict that has killed more than 13,200 people since April 2014.
In recent weeks, Kyiv and its Western backers have accused Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops near its border with Ukraine as a possible prelude to an invasion as early as next month.
The EU has urged Russia to deescalate and engage in renewed diplomacy over the seven-year conflict, threatening strong new sanctions in coordination with Britain and the United States if there is any attack.
Russia denies it has plans to launch an offensive and has issued a series of demands about Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO and the Western alliance’s activities near its western border.
Ukraine-Russia tensions were already the focus of a summit on December 15 between EU leaders and their neighboring Eastern European counterparts, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
After meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Scholz on the sidelines of the Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels, Zelenskiy said Kyiv was ready for talks with Russia in any format, but urged Western countries to keep pressure on Moscow through sanctions.
Macron’s office said the meeting sought to find ways to restart negotiations in the Normandy Format that involves France and Germany.
Discussions about tensions with Belarus over migration flows on the EU’s eastern border are also set to take place after the bloc earlier this month slapped a fifth sanctions package on strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime.
The West and the Belarusian opposition accuse Lukashenka of rigging the results of a presidential election in August 2020 that handed him a sixth consecutive term in office.
The results sparked months of protests and an increasingly brutal crackdown by Lukashenka’s regime, with tens of thousands or people across the country being detained.
There have been credible reports of torture and ill-treatment by security forces. Several people have died during the crackdown. Many of Belarus’s opposition leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country.
Spiking energy prices and the threat of persistent inflation will also be a subject of talks between the EU leaders. Those discussions are likely hit on the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
Approval for the already complete pipeline, which would help ease Europe’s natural gas woes, has been temporarily halted by German regulators until it comes into line with EU energy laws.
But the situation on the Russian-Ukraine border is now a factor, with new German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock saying earlier this month that the gas pipeline would be shelved in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Much of Europe has been hit hard by the Delta variant of the coronavirus and is now bracing for the new Omicron strain to fuel a wave of infections.
