Lithuanian president calls on West to further tighten sanctions against Russia

VILNIUS – Western sanctions against Russia have been less effective than expected and should therefore be tightened further, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has said.

“We still have a lot to do in order to … stop Russia’s ability to continue this war. Our sanctions are bricking but our sanctions unfortunately did not bring so far the result we expected, so this is the reason why we have to discuss and consider a next sanction package and we [Lithuania] are clearly in favor of this,” he said upon arrival at the meeting of the EU Council in Brussels on Thursday.

Asked about the sanctions that the West could still impose against Russia, the Lithuanian president said that “we have a very big potential to improve our sanctions and tighten them”.

“There are many items we can include in sanctions, [such as] some metals, some diamonds, some persons related to war crimes in Ukraine and the annexation of its territories,” Nauseda stated.

He noted that sanctions should also apply to Belarus because Russia “has been planning and launching attacks on Ukraine from Belarusian soil”.

The latest – the eighth – package of EU sanctions against Moscow came into force earlier in October.

The EU added 30 natural persons and 7 legal entities to its ‘black’ list and introduced a new listing criterion, which will allow it to sanction persons who facilitate the circumvention of sanctions. In addition, the bloc included a price cap on Russian crude oil in its eighth round of sanctions, although concrete numbers have yet to be determined.