Calls to impose new punitive measures and incentives, including ones on European-Russian projects upon Moscow, have resumed after the recent incident off the Crimean coast when Ukrainian vessels sailed into Russian waters. Moscow has slammed it as a provocation.
German Ambassador to Ukraine Ernst Reichel, while commenting on the EU’s possible reaction to the Kerch incident and recent elections in Donbass that the Ukrainian authorities claim to be illegal, has said that there is no consensus within the European Union to really go ahead with additional sanctions against Russia. The diplomat stated at a roundtable called “Sanctions against Russia: How to Preserve European Unity?” organised in Kiev, that one feels “an imminent task to make sure that this conflict that does not escalate to a thing that can spin out of control”.