EU’s oil embargo gets mixed reactions

The European Union’s latest sanction package that includes a partial oil embargo against Russia drew applause from Ukraine and mixed reviews from energy analysts Tuesday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement reached late Monday, which bans oil delivered on barges but temporarily exempts pipeline deliveries, will effectively cut around 90% of oil imports from Russia to the E.U. by year’s end.

“The oil embargo will speed up the countdown to the collapse of the Russian economy and war machine,” Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

Analyst Simone Tagliapietra said Russia will be able to sell much of the oil, but probably at a substantial discount. Tagliapietra, an energy expert at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, called the embargo “a major blow.”

Matteo Villa, an Italian analyst for the ISPI think tank, was less convinced.

“With oil prices rising and Russian exports holding up for now, the ‘blow’ received by the Russians falls,” Villa tweeted. “The cost to Europeans rises.”

Analysts at Russia-based Sinara Investment Bank shrugged off the embargo.

“Although the measures announced by the European Union look threatening, we don’t see a crippling impact on the Russian oil sector,” the bank said in a statement. “Russian oil producers have time to solve logistics problems and change their client base.”

2 Russian soldiers sentenced to prison for war crimes

A court in the central Ukraine city of Poltava on Tuesday sentenced two captured Russian soldiers to 11 years and six months in prison for their roles in shelling civilian areas near Kharkiv. It was the second war crimes trial since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Alexander Bobykin and Alexander Ivanov served in Russian artillery units that destroyed a school and other buildings in and around Dergachi, a village about 12 miles northwest of Kharkiv, prosecutors said. The men, who watched proceedings from a reinforced glass box, had pleaded guilty to charges of “violating laws and customs of war.”

In the first war crimes trial, Russian soldier Vadim Shishimarin was sentenced last week to life in prison for fatally shooting a Ukrainian civilian.

Ukraine military leader warns war is far from over

More than three months after Russia’s invasion, a top Ukrainian military official warned Tuesday that an end to the brutal conflict that has left much of his country in ruin is not near. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, cited fierce battles for control of the separatist eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk – and other areas as well.

“I think those people who said that the war would end very soon, that we have already won, that we will celebrate in April, said a dangerous thing,” he said. “Unfortunately, the war will continue, and we have a lot to do to win. It is very difficult for us at the front.”

Russian takes swath of crucial eastern Ukrainian city

Russian forces seized half of the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, one of the last major cities under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region, as Moscow continued to make gains in its drive for control of the industrial Donbas.

Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said Tuesday that street fighting and artillery bombardments threaten the lives of the estimated 13,000 civilians remaining in the battered city that once was home to more than 100,000. More than 1,500 people in the city have died since the war began in February, he said.