Euobserver.com

When it comes to capping the price of gas in Europe, the positions among the EU's 27 heads of state and government are another jumble.

Experts argue that an oil embargo would only really damage the Russian economy — if the EU joins the UK and US effort.

A membership perspective is, in no small degree, a symbolic gesture. But these gestures matter both to provide moral and political support to Ukrainians under attack and to undermine Putin's claims to Ukraine and the rest of the region.

Amid the pomp, and the grandness of the setting for an EU summit in Versailles, few breakthroughs were seen on how to rein in Russia's aggression in Ukraine, like the possible "war crime" at a Mariupol hospital.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday called for a full investigation into the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, southern Ukraine, saying that it may have been a "war crime." The Russian strike, which killed three people including a child and left more than dozen injured, is "inhumane, cruel and tragic," she wrote on Twitter.

Moldova relies on Russian gas and it has 1,500 Russian troops fully in control of part of its territory, Transnistria. In light of the situation in Ukraine, it's all rather ominous.

Hungarian lawmakers on Thursday elected Katalin Novák, the former family affairs minister in prime minister Viktor Orbán's cabinet, as the country's first female president. Orbán-loyalist Novák, 44, was elected for a five-year term with two-thirds majority of the parliament where Orbán's Fidesz party has a legislative supermajority. Her predecessor, another Orbán-loyalist, János Áder, was known for rubber-stamping Orbán's controversial laws on migration, judiciary, civil society, and economy.

Some consultancies, such as Brunswick or Kreab, were already refusing Russian clients well before the invasion in late February. Law firm Covington represented the Ukrainian government on a pro-bono basis in its case against Russia at the Hague this week.

Ahead of a summit, EU leaders are deeply divided on both Ukraine's EU accession, and on how quickly to phase-out Russian fossil fuel imports, the key source of energy for many EU countries.

Today ordinary Russians are once again victims of a totalitarian regime. But still, something is breaking inside me.

European member states that need to take the responsibility for this crisis by implementing the Temporary Protection Directive — for everyone.

Ukraine's nuclear regulator warned on Wednesday radioactive material could be released from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after a power supply cut. But there is "no critical impact" on safety because the plant could cool down without the need for electrical supply, according to the IAEA, a UN nuclear watchdog. Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, is currently under Russian military control.

The EU on Wednesday agreed further sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, hitting around 160 Russian and Belarusian officials and oligarchs, the maritime sector, plus three Belarus banks - including cutting them from the SWIFT banking system. However, European ports remain open for Russian ships. The package bans EU exports of naval equipment and software to Russia, and provides guidance on cryptocurrencies to avoid their use to circumvent EU sanctions.

The draft report, from a special committee on foreign interference and disinformation, also calls for the EU-wide ban on foreign funding for European political parties — and legislation to make it harder for foreign regimes to recruit former top politicians.

There are growing concerns that the EU's push for alternative gas sources will simply lead to burning the most-polluting sources as Russian gas gets phased out. But the EU climate chief says there should be no taboos.

US president Joe Biden said Tuesday that Washington would ban imports of Russian oil and gas to target "the main artery of Russia's economy" even as the EU continues to agonise over the issue ahead of a leaders' summit in France this week. Biden said the US understands its European allies "may not be in a position" to impose a similar ban because of EU dependency on Russian gas.

There are things we can do to lessen the suffering of people caught in Ukraine and the more than one million and a half Ukrainians who have fled across the border to Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and beyond.

Leon Trotsky once said: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." The will to prevent war is what started European integration. And it is still what propels it forward.

Rzeszów, a small town in southeast Poland, normally attracts Polish tourists heading to ski in nearby mountains. But it's now welcoming refugees — and soon perhaps Ukraine fighter pilots.

EU leaders plan to say at their summit in Versailles, France, this week that, "Russia's war of aggression constitutes a tectonic shift in European history," according to a draft conclusions seen on Tuesday. The bloc plans to pledge to "increase substantially defence expenditures" and to "phase out" Russian fuel imports including coal, oil and gas, according to the draft for the summit, which takes place Thursday and Friday.