Overview
The agreement comes after previous meetings of EU ambassadors failed to result in consensus
US secretary of state Marco Rubio is speaking to reporters in Manila now, after meeting with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and attending the Asean summit earlier today.
He says the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “a very bloody war,” with the Russians now “suffering strikes deep in their territory; something you did not see at the end of the year.”
“Ukraine’s played a tremendous price as well. We’ve seen you know civilian deaths, strikes in Kyiv. … This war has not been good for Ukraine either. So I think both sides should have an incentive to bring it to an end.
Details
That’s been the challenge: [finding] an end that both sides can accept. And we’ve tried, and we’ll continue to try to see if we can find a middle ground that brings this about, and we’re prepared to play that role if the opportunity presents itself. We express that today, and we’ve expressed it in the past.”
“We’re adding 32 more Russian banks to our transaction ban list. As well as crypto firms and oil trading platforms.
Freezing the oil price cap adjustment for a year, so that the Russian war machine does not benefit from market shocks.
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Originally published at www.theguardian.com.