Does The EU Still Have The Sanctions Cards Needed To Hurt Russia? – Analysis

While attending the European Political Community Summit in Tirana, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk hold a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo Credit: Ukraine Presidential Press Service

 May 21, 2025  

By RFE RL

By Ray Furlong and Rikard Jozwiak

(RFE/RL) — With the ink still drying on the European Union’s freshly printed 17th sanctions package on Russia, work is already underway on a next step that European leaders say will be “massive.”

But some analysts warn that, in many ways, the EU has already used its best cards and doesn’t have many left in its hand, especially at a time when Washington seems reluctant to join in as it pushes peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow.

“The cards that we still have to play largely include measures for which we would need the United States,” Benjamin Hilgenstock, Senior Economist at the Kyiv-based KSE Institute, a think tank, told RFE/RL.

“Specifically, this would be about removing Russian oil and gas from global markets in volume,” he said, adding that counties such as India, China, and Turkey would not stop buying Russian fossil fuels without the weight of secondary US sanctions.

European leaders threatened Russia with “massive” sanctions on May 10 if Moscow did not agree to a 30-day cease-fire proposed by Washington. They said they were making their demand after coordinating it with US President Donald Trump.

It was meant to appear as a game-changing moment, but the apparent transatlantic concord quickly went awry. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not commit to a cease-fire during a phone callwith Trump on May 19, yet Trump praised the call and did not appear ready to announce new US sanctions saying imposing them now could imperil talks and make the situation “much worse.”

To be clear: the “massive” sanction threat was nothing to do with the 17th package of EU measures announced on May 20, as this had already been some time in the works.

An Empty Threat?

So now, European leaders may need to deliver something big, by themselves, without US involvement – or appear to have made an empty threat.

Can they deliver?

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys thinks so. He told RFE/RL that the EU could redouble its efforts on Russia’s energy exports.

“We should stop the major income to Russia’s budget and major income to their war machine. This is the exports of gas, oil, LNG. We have to stop those,” he said.

But in practice, countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium are actually importing more LNG now than they were a year ago. Budrys argued that there were plenty of alternatives on the global market.

“There are voices that say, ‘oh, they’re too expensive and it will cost us too much, we can’t afford this.’ Look, we (Lithuania) already did this,” he added.

But the arguments about price illustrate that the self-harming impacts of sanctions have held the EU back in the past – and may do in the future, too.

Sanctions will be “massive, only when we are willing to go further than we would like to go,” Tom Keatinge of the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) told RFE/RL.

“By that I mean only when we’re willing to inflict sanctions that have a degree of blowback on our own economies,” he added.

Hitting Energy Exports

Hilgenstock makes a distinction between countries using Russian LNG for economic reasons and countries such as Hungary and Slovakia that would oppose an import ban due to their close political relationship with Moscow.

Even if economic objections can be overcome, political considerations can also delay or complicate a significant tightening of sanctions in this area.

European leaders have suggested that the next sanctions package will include the energy sector, but that’s a broad term. Some have also suggested financial measures.

“It’s relatively unclear what they are actually talking about,” said Hilgenstock, who is also an Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

“Are they overselling what they can deliver? I think they are.”

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen did provide some indication of what might come next in remarks on May 16.

“It will include working on listing more vessels of the Russian shadow fleet,” she said, referring to ships without clear ownership used to evade restrictions on Russian oil and oil products.

The 17th sanctions package, and British measures announced the same day, already added dozens of ships, following the pattern of previous packages. As such, adding new ships would appear like further cumulative action rather than something bold and new.

‘All Talk And No Trousers’

Von der Leyen also mentioned reducing the oil price cap for Russian oil, another punitive measure imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But this too would require US agreement for global enforcement.

Three years of sanctions have had a big impact on the Russian economy but have not stopped Moscow’s aggression.

Still, announcing the latest measures, European politicians were resolute.

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy called Putin a “warmonger” while urging him to agree to the 30-day cease-fire, adding that “delaying peace efforts will only redouble our resolve to help Ukraine to defend itself and use our sanctions to restrict Putin’s war machine.”

EU Foreign Affairs chief Kaja Kallas wrote on social media that “more sanctions on Russia are in the works.”

Keatinge warns that not following through with genuinely impactful sanctions risks undermining credibility.

“It gives plenty of ammunition to [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and others to basically say…the Europeans are all talk and no trousers.”

Hilgenstock shares the concern.

“We’re seeing Vladimir Putin’s response, or rather non-response to this ultimatum,” he says, referring to the May 10 statement on “massive” sanctions.

“That makes clear what the Russian side thinks.”

• Ray Furlong is a Senior International Correspondent for RFE/RL. He has reported for RFE/RL from the Balkans, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and elsewhere since joining the company in 2014. He previously worked for 17 years for the BBC as a foreign correspondent in Prague and Berlin, and as a roving international reporter across Europe and the former Soviet Union.
• Rikard Jozwiak is the Europe editor for RFE/RL in Prague, focusing on coverage of the European Union and NATO. He previously worked as RFE/RL’s Brussels correspondent, covering numerous international summits, European elections, and international court rulings. He has reported from most European capitals, as well as Central Asia.

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Weapons Looted From Militaries Fuel Sahel Jihadist Violence

 May 21, 2025

By Africa Defense Forum

Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) used drones loaded with explosives when they killed 12 Cameroonian Soldiers and wounded 10 more in a March attack on a military base in the northeastern Nigerian town of Wulgo. The Soldiers were part of the Multinational Joint Task Force working to combat terrorism in the area.

Supply chains for such weaponry are limited in the Sahel, but terror groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group often use military weaponry seized during attacks on African militaries to perpetrate further violence.

This is according to a new report by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which found no evidence that terror groups can access weapons such as assault rifles, battle rifles, grenade launchers, machine guns, mortars and rocket launchers directly from outside of the central Sahel. The United Nations has passed several mandates specifically prohibiting the sale or supply of weapons to countries in conflict or those with poor human rights records.

After the attack on Wulgo, ISWAP released photos of drones, bullets and machine guns it seized in the attack.

CAR’s analysis of weapons seized from Sahelian terror groups between 2014 and 2023 found that at least 20% of them were diverted from national militaries in Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

“These weapons allow Salafi jihadist groups to build their arsenals and reinforce their positions, thus enabling them to expand their authority over large portions of territory and increasing the threat to state authority and local communities,” the report said.

According to CAR, the arsenals of terror groups operating in the Liptako-Gourma tri-border region shared by Burkina Faso, Mali and western Niger and those in the Lake Chad region are similar. Assault rifles accounted for 78% of weapons recovered in the Liptako-Gourma region and 85% around Lake Chad. Most of the ammunition recovered from the groups was military grade.

Matthew Steadman, co-author of the CAR report, told Agence France-Presse the acquisition of military-grade materiel by Sahelian terror groups has created a “vicious circle.”

“As they become more powerful, as they seize more weapons, as they hit more outposts, then their ability to keep doing that increases exponentially,” Steadman said.

Another key source of weapons for these groups were firearms left over from previous conflicts, the report found. Terror groups in the Liptako-Gourma and Lake Chad border areas typically use decades-old assault rifles, particularly those manufactured in the 1960s and the 1970s. They commonly acquire so-called “legacy weapons” by accessing illicit weapon markets.

“Weapons that date back decades are still in service with several security forces in the region, meaning that some older items may have been diverted from state custody relatively recently,” the report said.

Sahelian terror groups typically maintain tight control of weapons they seize and do not routinely redistribute them. However, ongoing CAR investigations suggest that groups in the Liptako-Gourma area occasionally sell captured weapons for revenue, mainly in the form of gold. These funds help them pay militants or acquire supplies and equipment.

“Alongside booming local demand for small arms and light weapons, as well as a growing artisanal gold mining industry, this practice may lead to an increase in the illicit circulation of diverted government-issued weapons beyond Salafi jihadist circles,” the report said, adding that more investigations are needed to better understand the issue.

CAR found little evidence that ideologically aligned Salafi jihadist groups that operate in different regions — such as the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) and ISWAP — share weapons with each other. In some cases, terror groups that battle one another — such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, and the ISSP in the Liptako-Gourma area — have used weapons from the same series, indicating that they rely on similar procurement efforts.

Weapons produced and exported to the region after the 2011 fall of Moammar Gadhafi’s Libyan regime accounted for just 7% of weapons seized, according to CAR.

“Furthermore, CAR has not seen any evidence that Salafi jihadist groups in the central Sahel are systematically relying on long-range supply sources, including from Libya,” the report said. “Rather, weapons in Salafi jihadist holdings that originated in [Gaddafi-era] stocks were most likely sourced from local markets.”

However, the report showed that more than half of the small-caliber ammunition seized from Sahelian jihadists was manufactured within a decade of its recovery. Much of this ammunition was supplied to, and redirected from, central Sahelian militaries.

Africa Defense Forum

The Africa Defense Forum (ADF) magazine is a security affairs journal that focuses on all issues affecting peace, stability, and good governance in Africa. ADF is published by the U.S. Africa Command.

Idols & Idealism: Russian Archives Throw New Light On India’s Anti-War Politics Of 1940s And 1950s – Analysis

Subhas Chandra Bose addressing a meeting in Japan in 1945. Photo credit: Japan-forward.com

 May 21, 2025  

By Raju Mansukhani

JV Stalin responses clear the air on 1942 Quit India movement, leadership of Netaji Bose

In our age when leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and America’s Donald Trump are engaged in regional wars, disrupting trade regimes, creating greater-than-ever stress for governments, migrants and professionals throughout the world, it is Vijay Singh, a retired professor of history from Delhi University who has been diligently digging through archives in Russia, UK and east European countries to clear the air on key issues of anti-war politics of the 1940s and 1950s in the vast Indian sub-continent. 

Explained Vijay Singh, “through documents representing a section of the Molotov Holding of the former central party archives of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU), we are now studying the exchanges between the Communist Party of India (CPI)and the CPSU (Bolshevik) in 1952 after the discussions between the two parties in Moscow in 1951.” 

The soft-spoken professor underlines the significance of this correspondence, “The materials we are referring to cover a series of historical questions of the CPI which have been extremely opaque in terms of the Soviet understanding; and which arise in discussions in turn provoked by the right-wing politics of the Congress, the communal forces and rightist sections of the socialist movement.” These have not only been contentious issues but continue to be debated and discussed till date. Infact the Indian left parties are invariably taunted in political forums for their stance on the 1942 Quit India movement which shook up the British Empire: it was Mahatma Gandhi’s clarion call to ‘do-or-die’ in the prolonged anti-colonial struggle.  

The Molotov Holding in the CPSU(B) archives are shedding light on the Soviet view on the policies of the CPI during the wartime and the post-war period. Through 1951-52 Ajoy Ghosh, as the general secretary of CPI, had extensive exchanges with the CPSU (B) in Moscow and, in many ways, getting to know how JV Stalin was perceiving the politics of independent India. Said Vijay Singh, “This correspondence and documents form only a part of the extensive exchanges: there are earlier letters by Ajoy Ghosh and the responses of Stalin are not available to us. It is likely that other exchanges may come to light in the future and help us to understand the different positions better. The documentation also indicates the method by which the Soviet party formed its policies on various issues.” 

Ajoy Ghosh: Global vision 

For readers who may not be aware, Ajoy Ghosh remains a highly-respected national leader not only of undivided India but across the world. In fact Mainstream magazine, in its edition dated 21 February 2009, had devoted a major article titled ‘A Forgotten Communist’ where the author Sankar Ray wrote, “Primarily, Ghosh was committed to proletarian internationalism and worldwide battle for socialist transformation. Boris Ponomaryov, Alternate Member of the Polit-Bureau of the now-defunct Communist Party of Soviet Union for about two decades, described him as one of the ‘sterling leaders’ of the era of Communist International alongside the legendary Ho Chi-Minh, Dolores Ibaruri, the firebrand leader of the Republican struggle of Spain, French Communist stalwart Maurice Thorez, Antonio Gramsci’s comrade-in-arms Palmiro Togliatti, German Communist leader Walter Ulbricht and the British scholar-communist Rajani Palme Dutt among a few others.” 

On 5 August 1952, Ajoy Ghosh wrote to Stalin, who was the general secretary of the CPSU (B), and the task of replying was entrusted to the USSR state security ministry under Comrade Ignatiev. “Here we find,” as Vijay Singh underlined, “the reply drafted by the central committee, the comments of the Soviet leadership, and the final draft prepared by the central committee on a particular range of questions. Of enormous value are the Soviet views of the approach of the CPI to the Congress Party and Subhash Chandra Bose in the period of the anti-fascist war. The Soviet party did not accept the CPI policies regarding the British. As is known, the CPI supported the British on the grounds that they were allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The Soviet leadership was of the opinion that the British in fact avoided opening a second front against Fascist Germany and desired the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to engage in mutually destructive combat.”  

To join the dots across historical time, Ajoy Ghosh’s letter expressing his concern and seeking the CPSU (B) guidance came ten years after the Quit India movement launched by the Congress in August 1942. It was at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee on 8 August 1942 Mahatma Gandhi raised the call for ‘Do or Die’. The British imperial establishment, especially in New Delhi, could now witness the upsurge in the movement and it seemed as if the 1857 revolt or ‘First War of Independence’ was now being replayed. It is also important to note that by August 1952 the new Republic of India had conducted its first general elections with the Indian National Congress victorious with 364 seats, and a comfortable majority in the Parliament under the Prime Ministership of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru. 

What’s equally noteworthy is the performance of the left parties in 1952: the CPI under Ajoy Ghosh won 16 seats, and almost 3.30% of the popular vote; the Socialist Party led by Acharya Narendra Dev was victorious with 12 seats, and JB Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party had 9 seats to its credit. The People’s Democratic Front, communists based out of Hyderabad, was victorious in 7 parliamentary seats; the Peasants and Workers Party of India with two seats, the Revolutionary Socialist Party with 3 seats and the Forward Bloc (Marxist) with one parliamentary seat. This is a far cry from the 2024 general elections when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has merely four seats, the CPI with two and the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation with two seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament). 

In his correspondence with CPSU (B), Ajoy Ghosh enumerated the positive results of the parliamentary participation in 1951-52 for peasants and workers despite the problems arising from lack of experience in this sphere. In some quarters the parliamentary participation has been interpreted as the beginnings of a parliamentary path; hence it is interesting to note that the CPSU (B) in its revolutionary period saw nothing untoward in the CPI’s electoral participation, said Vijay Singh. 

Forward Bloc and Bose 

It is the Forward Bloc which demands reader attention now with Ajoy Ghosh seeking the opinion of the CPSU (B) through his letter to Stalin. The response, said the retired professor of history, needs careful study. 

Ghosh, in his letter wrote, “We had to also note that Bose (that is Subhas Chandra Bose, also referred to as Netaji or Leader), by entering into a union with Japan, and also creating illusions that the Japanese army would liberate India, had betrayed the case of freedom, preparing the conditions for the enslavement of India. Therefore, distancing ourselves widely from both the Congress and Bose, we (meaning the CPI) had to try to develop a mass movement against the British up to a revolutionary seizure of power by the people, by using all forms of struggle, organizing mass campaigns against payment of taxes and rents, organizing guerrilla warfare in the countryside, organising general strikes and uprisings in the cities. Our criticism of Congress had to be aimed at exposing its deceptive stance on the question of bringing down the British dominance, and on denouncing Bose, who betrayed the Indian people in the interest of the Japanese. Following such tactics, we would not harm the interests of the USSR in the antifascist war but, on the opposite, would assist them.”  

The CPSU (B) response is unambiguous; it stated: “In relation to this, the question of whether the Indian Communist Party had to change its tactics after the battle of Stalingrad is no longer relevant. No doubt, the whole mass of the followers of Subhas Bose cannot be seen as traitors or as “fifth column of Japanese fascism”, despite the fact that Subhas Bose during the war, being in Japan, openly sided with militarist Japan and fascist Germany, being in a status of an agent of the Japanese imperialists when they were creating the so-called Indian national army. On the question of Subhas Bose, one should not worsen the relations with the ‘Forward Bloc’ party in order not to lose the democratic part of this party as an ally.” The photographs of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at different events in Japan, and also with Adolf Hitler, have been in public domain, and adorn different museums dedicated to Bose and the Indian National Army he formed. 

Forward Bloc, it may be recalled, had been an integral part of the Indian National Congress when it was formed on 3 May 1939 by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. After India’s Independence in 1947, Forward Bloc (Marxist) emerged as an independent political party with Sarat Chandra Bose, Subhas Chandra’s brother, being one of its key leaders.

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and his struggle for India’s freedom from British imperial rule, cannot be complete without the mentioning the controversies, mysteries and myths surrounding the fate of this iconic hero of Bengal and the air-crash of 1945. Anuj Dhar, the journalist-turned-researcher has penned several works concerning Bose: Subhas Chandra Bose: India’s Biggest Cover-up in 2012 was followed by What Happened to Netaji in 2016 (published and distributed by Vitasta Publishing). When asked about the authenticity of his research, Anuj Dhar said that he was justified by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court and his research was stamped as ‘genuine and based on relevant material’.

Unravelling the truth

It is the Soviet connection and the conspiracy theory that Dhar has explored in his endeavour to unravel the truth about Netaji in 1945. Dhar mentioned reports that Dr. Saroj Das of Calcutta University, told his friend Dr. RC Mazumdar that Dr. S Radhakrishnan the-then Indian Ambassador to Soviet Union had told him that Bose was in Russia. In another report, former Indian ambassador Dr. Satyanarayana Sinha met CPI founder Abani Mukherjee’s son Georgey, who said his father and Netaji were imprisoned in adjacent cells in Siberia. In 1995, a team from Calcutta’s Asiatic Society found a bunch of declassified files that hinted at Bose having been in the USSR after 1945.

Dr. Purobi Roy, a member of the team of scholars, said she found a document stamped ‘most secret’ dated 1946, in the military archives of Paddolosk, near Moscow, which mentioned Stalin and Molotov discussing Bose’s plans whether he would remain in the USSR or leave. Dr. Roy also said she found a KGB report in Bombay from 1946, which said, “it is not possible to work with Nehru or Gandhi, we have to use Subhas Bose”. This implies Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was still alive in 1946. These names and events have been in the public domain for long, often quoted in the Indian and south-east Asian media. 

In Dhar’s bestselling books, the accounts of the three enquiry commissions are detailed: The first two committees, Shah Nawaz Khan Committee of 1956 and Justice G D Khosla Commission of 1970, concluded that Bose died in an air crash.  But Anuj Dhar alleges that the witnesses “who mostly belonged to the Congress government and Intelligence Bureau (IB)” presented ‘manipulated’ documents before these committees. In his book, Mr. Dhar cites truncated documents and false statements given by top officers of IB. 

On the 119th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Prime Minister Modi released 100 secret documents which had been declassified and were relating to the mysterious disappearance of Netaji. Historians, military experts and the media reported that the release of declassified papers fails to confirm or contradict the long-held theory that Netaji died in a plane crash in Taipei on 18 August 1945. Quite clearly, the Netaji saga will continue to unfold different facets as the years go by. 

Raju Mansukhani, based in New Delhi, is a researcher-writer on history and heritage issues; a media consultant with leading museums, non-profits, universities and corporates in India and overseas. Contributing regular columns, book reviews and features in the media he has drawn attention of the new generations to critical issues and personalities of Indian and Asian history. Over the last three decades he has authored books on diverse subjects including the media, palace architecture, sports and contemporary history. Through in-depth documentaries, he has profiled leading Asian public figures highlighting their research and publications.