The UK's foreign secretary has hinted that the West will keep sanctions on Russia even after the end of the conflict in Ukraine.
Liz Truss told The Sunday Telegraph that the measures, which include a ban on energy imports by the UK, US, and Canada, will only be lifted after a "full ceasefire and withdrawal" by Russian forces.
She said Russia would have to pledge no further "aggression" against Ukraine, and would be hit with "snapback sanctions" if it did.
"Those sanctions should only come off with a full ceasefire and withdrawal, but also commitments that there will be no further aggression", Truss said. "And also, there’s the opportunity to have snapback sanctions if there is further aggression in future. That is a real lever that I think can be used".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that Russia not only end the "demilitarisation and de-Nazification" operation it launched on 24 February, but also withdraw from the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples' Republics, which Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised on 22 February, eight years after they declared independence.
Zelensky also wants Russia to cede Crimea, whose residents voted overwhelmingly to reunite with Russia in 2014 following the violent Maidan Square coup in Kiev.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that the West was waging a hybrid economic "total war" against Russia through its sanctions regime.
Truss also claimed that Russia had failed to honour previous agreements on Ukraine, a possible reference to the two Minsk accords brokered between Kiev and the Donbass republics by Russia, France, and Germany.
"What we know is that Russia signed up to multiple agreements they simply don’t comply with. So there needs to be hard levers. Of course, sanctions are a hard lever", the foreign secretary said.
Russia has no obligations under those accords, but Ukraine has continuously broken its pledges to pull back heavy artillery from the "line of control" and cease bombarding civilian areas.
Kiev reportedly deployed some 150,000 troops along the border with Russia and the Donbass republics, and stepped up its artillery attacks before Russia launched its military operation. Documents captured by Russian forces detail plans for a huge Ukrainian offensive on the two breakaway states.
Sanctions have already hit the West at least as hard as Russia, with prices of natural gas and oil soaring — with a knock-on effect on household bills and service station prices. US President Joe Biden admitted at the NATO summit in Poland this week that the embargo on Russia, which supplies one-quarter of the world's wheat exports, would lead to food shortages.
Meanwhile, Russia is diversifying its energy export markets to China and India, while Putin announced that European Union states must henceforth pay for Russian gas in roubles, not euros or US dollars.
The Russian Ministry of Defence announced on Friday that it had destroyed two-thirds of the Ukrainian Army's 2,400 armoured vehicles, two-thirds of its air force, almost all its anti-aircraft systems, and sunk or captured the entire Ukrainian Navy after a month of operations, for the loss of 1,351 soldiers killed and some 3,800 injured.