Ukraine proposes to Energy Community tougher sanctions against Russia, set of measures for energy independence from aggressor

Ukraine, chairing the Energy Community in 2022, during the 63rd meeting of its permanent high-level group in Vienna, proposed to tighten sanctions against the Russian Federation in the energy sector and take a comprehensive approach to achieving Europe's energy independence from the energy of the aggressor country, the Ministry of Energy said.

"Some of the proposed steps include replacing Russian hydrocarbons with supplies from other sources, including increasing the use of liquefied natural gas and oil tanker supplies, agreeing a nine-month deadline for refusing Russian oil, which will give suppliers from other countries the opportunity to enter into contracts with European customers and increase production, as well as phasing out Russian nuclear fuel," the ministry said on its website on Wednesday.

According to the report, Yaroslav Demchenkov, the Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine for European Integration, who took part in the meeting, also noted the expediency of applying the "Iranian model" of sanctions against gas transported to Europe via pipelines. This model assumes that payment for the resource will be kept on special European accounts until Russia stops aggression and compensates for the losses.

For his part, Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, noted that Ukraine had submitted a proposal to the Energy Community to introduce a ban on the purchase, import, transfer and transportation of energy products produced or processed in Russia.

"Today we took advantage of the opportunity of the presidency of the European Energy Community, which Ukraine received in 2022, and formally submitted to this organization a proposal to introduce a ban on the purchase, import, transfer and transportation of energy products generated or processed in Russia," he said in a statement on Telegram on Wednesday evening.

According to him, the matter concerns all oil and oil products, coal and other types of solid fuels, liquefied natural gas.

Yermak explained that now the Energy Community, on the basis of Ukraine's proposal, must make a decision and send it to all participating parties.

"Ukraine sets before the EU and countries such as Georgia and Serbia an ambitious but quite realistic task to stop funding the army, the state apparatus and propaganda of Russia - everything that supports the aggressive actions of this state, including the war in Ukraine," Yermak pointed out, adding that "Russia should be deprived of resources for the war and economically crushed."

In addition, the Ministry of Energy noted that during the meeting, a new package of EU acts was considered for adoption in the Energy Community, covering a number of market and system grid codes regarding the rules for the functioning of electricity markets and their coupling, requirements and fundamentals for managing energy systems.

A number of delegated EU regulations on energy labeling were also considered and certain aspects of the implementation of the Energy Community roadmap for decarbonization were discussed, including issues of an emissions trading system and monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emissions, the report specifies.