EU Agrees on Partial Ban of Russian Oil Imports

On Monday, EU leaders agreed to ban Russian oil imports by 90% by the end of this year.

The leaders ended a crisis with Hungary over the EU's toughest sanctions yet on Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine three months ago.

Diplomats said the agreement would pave the way for other elements of the sixth package of EU sanctions against Russia to enter into force, including banning Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, from accessing the SWIFT for international financial transactions.

"Agreement to ban the export of Russian oil to the EU. This immediately covers more than 2/3 of oil imports from Russia, cutting a huge source of financing for its war machine," Michel said in a tweet on Monday evening.

Two-thirds of the Russian oil imported by the European Union comes through tankers, and one-third via the Druzhba pipeline. Thus, the ban on imports of seaborne to two-thirds of the total oil imported from Russia.

The ban will cover 90% of all imports from Russia once Poland and Germany, which are also linked to the pipeline, cut the imports off by the end of the year.

The remaining 10% of the ban will be temporarily exempted so that landlocked Hungary, which has been the main obstacle to a deal, along with Slovakia and the Czech Republic, all linked to the southern part of the pipeline, can make up the supplies.

Budapest appears to have received assurance from other leaders that urgent action would be taken in the event of a sudden outage after Prime Minister Viktor Orbán raised concerns about risks to Russia's oil pipeline through Ukraine to Hungary.

It was not immediately clear how member states receiving oil by tankers would be compensated for the higher cost than those who would keep pipelines open.