The European Union’s partial embargo of Russian oil will have a negative impact on the entire global energy market, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
“These sanctions will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on, perhaps, the entire continent, and they will have a negative impact on Europeans, on us, and on the entire global energy market,” he warned.
Peskov added that the European market is quite important for Russia in terms of supplies, including sales volumes. However, now Moscow is taking measures to cushion the repercussions of these new restrictions, he noted.
“Certainly, we are redirecting spare volumes to other destinations. These are resolute, systematic actions that will allow us to minimize any adverse effects,” he said, emphasizing that Europe itself is bound to face serious blowback from its own decisions. “They (Europeans – TASS) will have to endure all of this,” Peskov stressed.
EU members on Monday approved the union’s sixth package of sanctions against Russia, which includes a partial embargo on imports of Russian oil and disconnecting Sberbank from the SWIFT international transaction system.
The ban on oil purchases will come into effect six months after the sanctions come into force, while the embargo of imports of oil products will go into effect after eight months. The embargo will impact tanker deliveries but won’t affect the Druzhba oil pipeline. According to Transneft, oil exports to non-CIS countries via the Druzhba pipeline in 2021 reached 35.9 mln tonnes.
