Feb 25, 2022: According to a report by Reuters, senior officials said that EU leaders would impose new sanctions on Russia, freeze its assets, block its banks’ access to European financial markets and hit “Kremlin interests” over its invasion of Ukraine.

The bloc will also target Russia’s other sectors, including trade, energy and transport, and will include export controls, which the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrell, has called “the toughest sanctions package we have ever implemented.”

An emergency summit will also discuss granting Ukraine EU candidate status, a step that Kyiv has long called for, Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda said, though it may not win approval from all EU leaders.

However, cutting Russia off the SWIFT global interbank payments system — one of the toughest non-military sanctions the West could impose — is unlikely to be agreed at this stage.

“Russia’s leadership will face unprecedented isolation,” Borrell said, condemning the Russian invasion as one of “the darkest hours for Europe since the end of World War Two.”

A draft of the EU summit’s conclusions, seen by Reuters, said the new round of sanctions “will impose massive and severe consequences on Russia for its action, in close coordination with our partners and allies.”

Russian forces fired missiles at Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and on Thursday landed troops on its shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, the largest attack in Europe since World War II against one state after another. The European Union (EU) has said it has called on Russia’s ambassador to Brussels to condemn the “unprovoked, unwarranted attack” and warned that it would work with its transatlantic partners to prepare a new “hard-hitting” package of sanctions.

The EU will also prepare new sanctions against Belarus.

The EU will also prepare a new aid package for Ukraine and help with evacuation operations, including of EU staff.

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