(Source: http://news.mail.ru/politics/19427305)

The conflict in the south-east of Ukraine and the Russia's role in these events are still one of the main foreign policy issues for the countries of the West. The economic ways to stop Russia's interference in the conflict were discussed on August 30 at a meeting of the EU summit in Brussels, and on September 4-5 the Ukrainian events will be one of the main issues of the NATO summit to be held in the Welsh Newport.

The EU plans: new sanctions. The possibility of introducing new economic sanctions against Russia was discussed in Brussels.

Following the results of the meeting, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the chairman of the European Union Herman Van Rompuy stated that the decision on a new set of sanctions against Russia will be made within the next week in the EU, in case the situation in the south-east of Ukraine will worsen or the current state of affairs will not change.

It is unknown what specific measures were discussed by the EU leaders, but further options could include the expansion and deepening of the existing sanctions. This may be the growing restrictions on Russian state banks concerning their access to debt financing and the distribution of the arms embargo on the existing military contracts. The current embargoes on arms exports to Russia do not apply to the contracts concluded prior to August 1, 2014. In fact, this exception was made at the insistence of France which is to deliver two helicopter-carrying ships “Mistral” costing $ 1.6 billion to Russia (the first ship is to be handed over in the October of this year).

Great Britain wants the EU to synchronize its restrictions regarding Russia with the American sanctions, such as the export of high-tech products, The Wall Street Journal said on Saturday.

The United States are ahead of Europe even in the length of the sanctions list, the American version including the president of “Rosneft” Igor Sechin, the head of “Rostekh” Sergei Chemezov, the RZD President Vladimir Yakunin, the  businessmen Gennady Timchenko and Boris Rotenberg, while the EU list does not include them.

It was initially planned that the summit on August 30 will be entirely devoted to the election of the new President of the European Council and the head of the EU diplomatic service – to replace Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, whose terms expire in November. But the last week’s events on the Ukrainian front (Poroshenko stated the “invasion” of Russian troops on Thursday) forced the European leaders to revise the program of the summit and to raise the issue of new sanctions against Moscow.

Poroshenko was invited to the meeting, after his talk with Van Rompuy and the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso the Ukrainian President said: “I have no doubt that today the European Commission will give to the European Council a task to prepare a certain decision on the sanctions.” But the immediate adoption of new measures is out of the question. The same Barroso stressed that the sanctions are not the ultimate goal, but a tool designed to force Russia to “change their behavior” and made it clear that Europe does not want confront Russia and hopes for ”a genuine political solution to the conflict” in Ukraine.