The European Union announced a fresh package of sanctions on Friday meant to hit Russia’s economy and make it more difficult for the country to fund its war in Ukraine, with plans to curb its energy trade and punish financial service companies.
With the new package — the bloc’s 19th — Europe’s leaders are trying to ramp up pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. But they are also sending a signal to the White House after President Trump has in recent days called on European nations to stop buying oil from Russia.
“It is time to turn off the tap,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, as she announced the package on Friday. “Our sanctions are an effective tool of economic pressure, and we will keep using them until Russia comes to the negotiating table.”
The package includes a plan to phase out Russian liquefied natural gas purchases by the start of 2027, a year earlier than previously planned. It also includes provisions meant to pressure companies from China and other nations to stop doing business with Russia. For the first time, it will hit cryptocurrency platforms that enable transactions with Russia.
The sanctions would also add more ships to the European Union’s blacklist. With those additions, the bloc would have sanctions on 560 vessels that are part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, a force of often-dilapidated ships with murky ownership structures that have helped the nation to get around Western limits and continue to profit from oil sales.
The latest package of sanctions will need to gain approval from political leaders across the 27-nation bloc, which could happen as soon as next month. Because the sanctions were negotiated extensively before their announcement, some version of the proposal is likely to eventually be adopted.
The announcement comes at a time when Mr. Trump has been talking regularly about sanctions and arguing that the United States is prepared to join an effort to hit Russia hard — but only if European nations stop purchasing oil from Russia.
“I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social last weekend.
While the European Union has been working to phase out Russian oil purchases, both Hungary and Slovakia still depend on Russian energy. Both have already been under pressure from their European neighbors to curb those purchases.
Before the start of the war in Ukraine, E.U. nations imported more than 40 percent of their pipeline natural gas and nearly 30 percent of their oil from Russia. But that share has fallen to about 10 percent for gas and, as of early this year, only about 2 percent for oil.
Some in Europe have seen Mr. Trump’s latest push as one that could increase the pressure on Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who is ideologically aligned with Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
But others see it as a sign that the president is setting out a high hurdle for joining further sanctions against Russia — allowing the United States to hold off while blaming that inaction on Europe.
“I certainly think it’s a distraction,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the economic think tank Bruegel. “The reality is there is a clear acceptance of the fact that Trump is not going to expend U.S. political and economic resources on getting touch on Putin.”
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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