Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at European and U.S. sanctions on Russia, Thailand and Cambodia preparing a peace declaration, and an International Court of Justice ruling on Israel blocking UNRWA aid deliveries.
Sanctions Package No. 19
The European Union approved sweeping new sanctions on Thursday targeting Russian oil, gas, and banking. By following in the footsteps of the White House’s own recent punitive measures against Moscow’s oil industry, Ukraine’s allies are hoping to choke off the revenue that supplies the Kremlin’s war effort and force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
The measures, first introduced in September but held up for weeks by Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, will be the bloc’s 19th sanctions package against Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Among the package’s biggest restrictions, EU members will ban imports of Russian liquified natural gas, with short-term contracts ending after six months and long-term contracts closing at the start of 2027.
“It is extremely positive that we have reached an agreement,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Thursday. “The sanctions have real impact and are hurting the Russian economy.”
The EU package will also add port bans on more than 100 ships in Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers, which Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions as well as engage in suspected spying and sabotage. EU members have also pledged to target Russian cryptocurrency transactions; prohibit Russian payment cards and systems; restrict Russian entities’ use of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing services; bar exports on electronic components, chemicals, and metals used in military manufacturing; and introduce a new system to limit the movement of Russian diplomats within the bloc.
The EU’s extensive measures follow the U.S. Treasury Department unveiling sanctions on Wednesday targeting Moscow’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, starting Nov. 21. The monthlong deadline means that Russia still has time to strike a deal and avoid the economic repercussions.
“Hopefully he’ll become reasonable,” U.S. President Donald Trump said of Putin on Wednesday, during a surprise White House meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte. The day before, the U.S. president postponed a planned summit with the Russian leader in Budapest.
The United States’ sanctions also carry a threat of secondary penalties against those who continue to purchase Russian oil—namely, China and India.
“The U.S. sanctions are a big deal,” FP’s Keith Johnson wrote, in part because “nothing matches the reach and potential pain of the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. dollar when it comes to sanctions.”
Already, international crude prices have jumped more than $2 per barrel. Refiners in India are set to sharply cut their Russian crude imports, and on Thursday, Chinese state oil majors suspended purchases of seaborne Russian oil.
While Ukraine has praised the U.S. and EU sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova denounced the measures as “entirely counterproductive, including in terms of signaling in favor or achieving a meaningful negotiated solution to the Ukrainian conflict.”
On Friday, members of the 35-nation “coalition of the willing”—a group of countries that have pledged support for Ukraine’s security—will meet in London to debate further efforts to support Ukraine’s war effort.
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What We’re Following
Push toward peace. Hope for a broader cease-fire deal between Thailand and Cambodia is high this week after Thai Defense Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit said on Thursday that “meaningful progress” has been made in ongoing peace talks. The two countries are expected to sign a joint declaration, witnessed by Trump, during this weekend’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The two countries have had a long-running border dispute that dates back more than a century, but the recent deadly conflict erupted in July, when clashes on both sides of the border killed at least 48 people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and destroyed ancient temples and other symbolic infrastructure. Malaysia and the United States brokered an initial cease-fire deal on July 28, ending five days of heavy fighting.
As part of the upcoming agreement, Thailand and Cambodia will withdraw heavy weapons from their borders, assist in land mine clearance, and establish a joint task force to tackle cybercrime. The deal will also pave the way for Thailand to release 18 detained Cambodian soldiers. The two countries have reached consensus in four disputed areas, and according to Natthaphon, Bangkok plans to build border fences in several noncontested locations.
Demanding more aid. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a nonbinding advisory opinion on Wednesday saying that Israel must allow the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) to provide vital humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the West Bank. Unhindered aid deliveries into Gaza are a key pillar of the agreed-upon Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal, which went into effect earlier this month. However, Israel has not allowed UNRWA to bring in supplies since March—a stance that it reaffirmed on Wednesday after the ruling, saying the country “will not cooperate with an organization that is infested with terror activities.”
The Israeli government has long alleged that UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas, and it accused some of the agency’s employees of being involved in the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel; the agency fired nine UNRWA staffers—out of roughly 13,000 in the enclave—in August 2024 after an internal U.N. investigation found that they “may have been involved.”
The U.S. State Department on Wednesday denounced the ICJ’s ruling, calling the decision “corrupt” and characterizing the court as a “partisan political tool.” Israel has repeatedly accused the United Nations of being biased against Israel.
Minimizing dependency. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney set a goal on Wednesday for Ottawa to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade; more than 75 percent of Canadian exports currently go to the United States. The new strategy, aimed at decreasing this reliance, marks a major pivot in the two countries’ once-close partnership, as Carney hopes to counter Trump’s ongoing trade war and repeated 51st statehood threats.
Carney’s announcement comes less than two weeks before Ottawa is set to release the government budget, which will detail how steep U.S. tariffs have undermined Canada’s top industries.
“Many of our former strengths—based on close ties to America—have become our vulnerabilities,” Carney said during an evening address on Wednesday, adding that the country’s automotive, steel, and lumber industries have suffered the most. “We have to take care of ourselves because we can’t rely on one foreign partner.”
U.S. tariffs on Canada target everything from steel and aluminum to energy and potash, though Carney said on Tuesday that it’s “possible” that a new trade deal will be reached before the upcoming summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, which begins on Oct. 31. Washington and Ottawa, alongside Mexico City, are also in negotiations to determine the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade deal, which is up for review in 2026.
Odds and Ends
For the first time in nearly 500 years, an English monarch has prayed with the pope of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1534, then-King Henry VIII officially broke with the church and formed the Church of England so he could divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. But on Thursday, King Charles III (another divorcee) broke with tradition to pray alongside Pope Leo XIV, signaling improvement in the two denominations’ historically fraught relationship.
The post The EU, U.S. Hit Russia Where It Hurts appeared first on Foreign Policy.
