European Union countries were unable for a third day running on Friday to agree on new sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine a year ago, with Poland rejecting Italy's demand for laxer new curbs on rubber imports, diplomats said.
Poland said the proposed restrictions on EU imports of Russia rubber included such a big quota of imports exempted and such long transition periods that they would have no effect in practice.
Other EU countries were baffled that Warsaw - a leading Russia hawk in the bloc - was risking having no new sanctions announced on the one-year anniversary of Russia's attack against Ukraine over just one element of a broader package.
"This is very bad optics. What was supposed to be key here is a message of solidarity with Ukraine on this special day," said one diplomat involved in the confidential negotiations between the 27 EU countries in the bloc's hub Brussels.
All member states need to approve sanctions for them to be enacted, making negotiations among the 27 often tedious and lengthy.
The EU has said what would be its 10th round of sanctions against Russia since the war started was designed to make financing the war more difficult and starve Russia of tech equipment and spare parts for arms used against Ukraine.
It would blacklist more individuals including what the West says are Russian propagandists, those Kyiv holds responsible for deporting Ukrainian children to Russia and those involved in the production of Iranian drones deployed on the frontline.
It would cut more banks including the private Alfa-Bank and the online bank Tinkoff off from the global system SWIFT and cut trade between the EU and Russia by more than 10 billion euros, according to the bloc's executive.
TOO LATE
Poland submitted "a compromise proposal" on rubber, the country's EU ambassador, Andrzej Sados, said early afternoon.
"All other key items in the 10th sanctions package seem to be agreed," he said.
But diplomatic sources said Italy refused that and had stuck to what had already been agreed by all the other 26 EU countries but Poland.
"We could have had a deal on Tuesday. This is bizarre," said another EU diplomat.
There have been no new talks going on since early afternoon in Brussels, and none had been planned as Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was making his way back from Kyiv where he had delivered tanks earlier on Friday.
Even if an approval were to come from Poland later on Friday, there was no chance the sanctions would formally be approved on the same day under EU procedures.
Diplomats in Brussels said Sweden, the current holder of the EU's rotating chairmanship, could set the formal approval deadline at 0900 GMT on Saturday - a day after the anniversary.
The symbolic failure looms large as all the G7 world's most industrialised powers - a group that includes three EU member countries and the bloc as a whole - sought a show of unity on Friday, with a joint statement pledging to deepen sanctions.
