The embargo cuts off Russian oil delivered by sea, while exempting oil imported through pipelines.

Landlocked Hungary had threatened to oppose restrictions on oil imports, a move that would have scuttled the effort that requires consensus of all EU members. European Council President Charles Michel said he expects EU ambassadors to formally endorse the embargo, which is part of a larger sanctions package, on Wednesday.

Ukrainian leaders have long called for banning Russian oil imports in order to deny Russia income it can use to fuel its war effort. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his appeal as he spoke to the EU Monday.

Combined with pledges from countries such as Germany to phase out their Russian oil imports, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement will “effectively cut around 90% of oil imports from Russia to the EU by the end of the year.”

Other parts of the sanction package include assets freezes and travel bans on individuals, and excluding Russia’s biggest banks, Sberbank, from the SWIFT global financial transfer system. The EU is also barring three Russian state-owned broadcasters from distributing content in EU countries.

EU leaders also agreed to provide Ukraine with $9.7 billion in assistance for the country’s economy and reconstruction efforts.

Luhansk fighting

Fierce fighting has erupted on the streets of the eastern Ukraine city of Sievierodonetsk, with Kyiv’s forces trying desperately to fight off the Russian onslaught.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy characterized the situation as “indescribably difficult.” In a televised speech, he described capturing Sievierodonetsk as “a fundamental task for the occupiers” and said Ukraine was doing all it could to protect the city from a Russian takeover.

Russian troops have entered the city, power and communications have been knocked out, and “the city has been completely ruined,” Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

“The number of victims is rising every hour, but we are unable to count the dead and the wounded amid the street fighting,” the mayor said. Striuk said 12,000 to 13,000 civilians remain in the city that once had 100,000 residents. They are sheltering in basements and bunkers to escape the Russian assault.

Striuk estimated 1,500 civilians in the city have died since the war began, from Russian attacks as well as from a lack of medicine or treatment.

Sievierodonetsk, the last major Ukrainian-held population center in the eastern Luhansk province, has become the focus of Russian attacks as Moscow attempts to control the Donbas region after failing to topple Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv, during more than three months of fighting. Sievierodonetsk is about 140 kilometers from the Russian border.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Russian troops “use the same tactics over and over again. They shell for several hours — for three, four, five hours in a row — and then attack. Those who attack die. Then shelling and attack follow again and so on until they break through somewhere.”

In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden said he would not send rocket systems to Ukraine that could reach Russia. Ukraine has received extensive U.S. military aid but has requested more powerful rocket systems.

Toll on journalists

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday that 32 media workers had been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

That includes French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, who died Monday near Sievierodonetsk.

French broadcaster BFM TV said the 32-year-old journalist was hit by shrapnel while reporting on Ukrainian evacuations from the area.

French President Emmanuel Macron sent his condolences to the family and colleagues of Leclerc-Imhoff, writing in a tweet that the journalist died showing “the reality of the war.”

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who was in Ukraine on Monday, called for an investigation into the journalist’s death, saying in a statement that “France demands that a probe be carried out as soon as possible.”

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/eu-agrees-to-ban-majority-of-russian-oil/6596526.html

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“Unfortunately there’s a difference between what Russia says and what it does, and what we’re seeing is no meaningful pullback,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America.

The number of Russian troops ringing Ukraine’s borders on three sides has grown to 150,000, President Biden said Tuesday.

Commercial satellite imagery has shown their numbers swelling in recent weeks, including large deployments of attack aircraft to locations near Ukraine’s borders. In Belarus, to Ukraine’s north, some 30,000 of Russia’s troops are participating in joint military exercises.

Late last week, U.S. officials sharply escalated warnings about the situation in Ukraine, urging Americans to leave the country as soon as possible ahead of an invasion that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said “may well happen soon.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials said that Russia’s military preparations for a full-scale invasion were complete and that an invasion was possible at any point this week.

That assessment has not changed, Blinken said Wednesday.

“President Putin’s put in place the capacity to act on very short notice. He can pull the trigger. He could pull it today, he could pull it tomorrow, he could pull it next week,” Blinken said.

Putin has consistently said that Russia does not intend to attack Ukraine. At a news conference Tuesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said that it is Russia’s intention to reach an agreement “by diplomatic means.”

Putin added that Russian military leaders had decided “to pull out part of the troops.”

But outside of Russia, officials said they would reserve judgment until seeing evidence of such a drawdown. “We’ve had other instances where they’ve made similar claims, and, in fact, the facts on the ground have proven otherwise,” Julie Smith, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said Wednesday.

NATO sees no signs of Russian withdrawal
NATO, the defense alliance that has long drawn ire from Russia, has come to similar conclusions as U.S. officials.

“So far, we do not see any sign of de-escalation on the ground. No withdrawals of troops or equipment,” said Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday. “What we see today is that Russia maintains a massive invasion force ready to attack.”

NATO is considering establishing new battlegroups in central and Eastern Europe, Stoltenberg said. The alliance has had a greater presence in Eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion of Crimea — including battlegroups stationed in each of the three Baltic states and Poland. The U.S. oversees the group based in Poland.

Stoltenberg did not say exactly where new battlegroups would be based, but one likely setting is Romania, which borders western Ukraine. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is participating in the meetings this week.

The window for diplomacy may still be open
With Russia indicating it remains open to a diplomatic way out of the crisis, the frenzied pace of efforts by the West have not slowed. Scholz’s visits to Moscow and Kyiv this week follow a similar tour by French President Emmanuel Macron last week. In recent days, Biden has spoken by phone with Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Macron and Scholz.

Although the Kremlin has cast Western warnings of an invasion as “hysteria,” Putin also says that his most important demands — which include barring Ukraine from joining NATO and the withdrawal of NATO troops from Eastern Europe — have been ignored.

On Tuesday, Biden repeated that the U.S. will not “sacrifice basic principles” of Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity and freedom to “choose with whom they will associate” — namely, NATO.

But Biden added that the U.S. had proposed a set of measures covering arms control, transparency and strategic stability. “As long as there is hope of a diplomatic resolution that prevents the use of force and avoids the incredible human suffering that would follow, we will pursue it,” he said.

Additional reporting by Teri Schultz in Brussels.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/1081276661/russian-troops-ukraine-nato

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RIGA, Latvia — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Tuesday that the U.S.-led military organization must prepare for the worst as concern mounts that Russia could be preparing to invade Ukraine.

NATO is worried about a Russian buildup of heavy equipment and troops near Ukraine’s northern border, not far from Belarus. Ukraine says Moscow kept about 90,000 troops in the area following massive war games in western Russia earlier this year, and could easily mobilize them.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that his country’s intelligence service had uncovered plans for a Russia-backed coup d’état. Russia denied the allegation and rejected the assertion that it is planning to invade Ukraine.

“You can discuss whether the likelihood for an incursion is 20% or 80%, it doesn’t matter. We need to be prepared for the worst,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Riga, Latvia, after chairing talks among NATO foreign ministers focused on the threat posed by Russia.

“There is no certainty, no clarity about exactly what are the Russian intentions, and they may actually evolve and change,” the NATO chief continued. Referring to Russia’s seizure in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Stoltenberg added: “They’ve done it before.”

Asked about the decision to activate NATO’s crisis response planning system, which helps analyze potential crises and prepare a response to them, he said: “Allies agree that we need to have the plans in place to be sure that we are always able to protect all allies against any potential threat.”

The United States has shared intelligence with European allies warning of a possible invasion. European diplomats acknowledge the Russian troop movements, but some countries have played down the threat of any imminent invasion ordered by Moscow.

“We are very concerned about the movements we’ve seen along Ukraine’s border. We know that Russia often combines those efforts with internal efforts to destabilize a country. That’s part of the playbook, and we’re looking at it very closely,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“Any renewed aggression would trigger serious consequences,” Blinken warned.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also said “Russia would have to pay a high price for any form of aggression.”

Maas said “honest and sustainable de-escalation steps, which can only go via the route of talks, are all the more important now.”

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 after Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly president was driven from power by mass protests. Weeks later, Russia threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency that broke out in Ukraine’s east.

Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of sending troops and weapons to back the rebels. Moscow denies that, saying that Russians who joined the separatists were volunteers. More than 14,000 people have died in more than seven years of fighting, which also has devastated Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as Donbas.

A 2015 peace agreement brokered by France and Germany helped end large-scale battles, but efforts to reach a political settlement have failed and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact. Russia has refused recent overtures for talks with France and Germany.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it is NATO that threatens peace in the region.

“Significant units and military equipment of NATO countries, including the U.S. and Britain, are being deployed closer to our borders,” Lavrov said during a news conference in Moscow. He alleged that the West has long provoked Ukraine “into anti-Russian actions.”

Whatever Russia’s intentions, NATO would not be able to provide Ukraine with any substantial military support in time to make a difference against Russian forces, so economic measures like Western sanctions are more likely to be used to inflict a financial cost on Moscow.

Stoltenberg underlined that Ukraine is not part of the military organization and so cannot benefit from the collective security guarantee available to member countries.

Meanwhile, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin announced that Belarus will conduct joint military drills with Russia “to cover the southern borders,” a reference to the border area near Ukraine, according to Belarus state news agency Belta. It’s unclear when this would happen.

Cook reported from Brussels. Dasha Litvinova in Moscow, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Jill Lawless in London contributed.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nato-warns-russia-avoid-costly-mistake-ukraine-81463502

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Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the whistleblower who reported calls  with Ukraine that led to the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, called for Milley’s ouster over the top general’s phone calls.

“He usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that,” Vindman wrote in a tweet.

Vindman testified against Trump in a House impeachment inquiry into the president’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Milley, the top-ranking officer in the military, made two phone calls with his Chinese counterpart in 2020 to assure them that the U.S. would not launch a nuclear strike, according to a new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post.

Republicans, including Trump himself, and conservative media allies have condemned Milley’s actions as “treasonous” and called for Milley’s sacking. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have expressed concern that any president is able to unilaterally launch a nuclear weapon without congressional input.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden said he still has “great confidence” in Milley. White House press secretary Jen Psaki also offered the administration’s endorsement of the top general, continuing that Milley “went through the normal channels of communication” and did not subvert the chain of command.

“The outgoing president of the United States, during this period of time, fomented unrest leading to an insurrection leading to an attack on the nation’s Capitol,” Psaki added, calling the situation “key context” for Milley’s actions.

Vindman, a former National Security Council staffer in the Trump White House, told USA TODAY in August that he believes his duties required him to report on the former president’s actions, regardless of his personal politics or the impact on his career.

After investigations surfaced that the Trump administration was withholding approved defense funding from Ukraine, Vindman’s complaint resurfaced as key evidence in Trump’s eventual first impeachment.

In July 2020, Vindman resigned from the Army, citing “bullying” from Trump and other senior aides that pushed him out of his national security role.

Follow Matthew Brown online @mrbrownsir.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/09/16/alexander-vindman-calls-gen-milley-resign-over-china-calls/8360646002/

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