- The EU is already considering a new package of measures but meets with Hungary's refusal.

- Voting Begins In The Accession Referendums Called By The Pro-Russian Authorities In Various Regions Of Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin with his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Does the West still have a margin against Putin? "The goal is not an immediate Russian collapse, but a slow but effective cooling"

Maximum pressure must be exerted on Putin. This idea, expressed by French President Emmanuel Macron, puts on the table a response from the West at the height of Russia's escalation with the partial mobilization to fight in Ukraine. The paths are parallel: the more war tension, the more movements of Kyiv's allies in terms of restrictive measures. But when the invasion is already seven months old, the question arises as to whether that margin to sanction Russia is running out.

For now, both the High Representative, Josep Borrell, and the European Commission have put on the table the option of working on the eighth package of sanctions. After a summer in which priority was given to "implementing the measures already approved", the turn in the war has caused a change of discourse. The last step taken by the 27 was the suspension of the Visa Facilitation agreement, signed with Moscow in 2007 and which, once blocked, causes the process for a Russian to obtain documentation to enter the Union to be longer and more expensive. Now, Putin's mobilization has caused deserters to flee who could be taken in by the member states; this would leave the measure with important nuances.

However, the debate on sanctions is very open. For example, Hungary has already said not only that it will not support a new package but that it will submit its effectiveness to a citizen referendum and plans to present a timetable to stop applying those that have already been agreed upon. Viktor Orbán thus vindicates his role as Putin's Trojan horse within the EU, and not only continues to buy gas from him but also maintains good diplomatic relations with the Kremlin despite the war. Precisely on energy, another measure that is valued is to put a cap on the price of Russian gas, something to which Moscow has already said that it will respond with retaliation, including a total shutdown of supply.

María Vallés, a doctor who specialized in restrictive measures of the European Union, explains to 20minutes that the fact that the EU may be left without a margin or not "depends on how the issue is raised" by the sanction has two aspects: "From the point of From the point of view of the field, we could say that there could be no margin because the measure has a series of objectives and those can be fulfilled and that's it", but there is also the "more subjective" point, which can refer to the people individual. "You can continue to sanction people as long as they are involved in the maneuvers that Russia is carrying out in this case."

Vallés also adds another key element: time. "If we go to the temporary question, where the margin is as wide as you want until they are lifted (if it is done)." The conclusion is that "it is possible to reach a point in which the margin is simply to extend them and extend them temporarily", but this, he argues, "does not have to be a bad thing: when you propose a sanction you elaborate the most complete possible for from there extend it in time".

That is the premise that several European leaders have been repeating in recent weeks. "The sanctions are going to stay," said, for example, the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, before the European Parliament. In Brussels, they believe that this is not the time for appeasement, even despite encountering the buts that the Government of Viktor Orbán is already beginning to put very openly. If Putin escalates to a military level, the West will have to do so with these measures as well. The United States, whose hands are less tied than the EU in terms of energy, has also decided to expand, for example, the list of people affected by these measures.

In addition, the dissenting voices are joined by the Italians: Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi may be part of the new transalpine government, and both have their qualms about the sanctions and the situation in Ukraine. The first assured that the EU measures "are useless" and his closeness to the Kremlin is well known. The second, a close friend of Putin, justified the Russian move. "Putin was pushed to invent this special operation by the Russian people, the party, the ministers," underlined Berlusconi, who stated that, according to Moscow's plans, "the troops should have arrived in Kyiv in a week and replaced the Zelensky's government for one of the decent people, only to return a week later".

We are facing a pressure tool and that pressure will be effective or good as long as it is focused on certain objectives

So are sanctions a limited tool? The doctor is clear: "Of course, and that's how it should be because in law nothing should be unlimited." Vallés, therefore, clarifies that one cannot think "that a sanction is the panacea and will solve a conflict". In reality, he adds, "we are dealing with a pressure tool and that pressure is going to be effective or good as long as it is focused on certain objectives. Not because the EU has not yet achieved any of those objectives, we have to think that sanctions are something negative ".

"The approach to sanctions has always been gradual"

For his part, Guillermo Íñiguez, a master's in European Law and a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, maintains that the risk of the EU running out of margin is "little" because the strategy that has been followed "has always been gradual, it has never used the entire arsenal to sanction Russia. The analyst gives as an example both the sectors that have been sanctioned and the list of oligarchs. "The objective is not to cause an immediate collapse of the Russian economy, but to generate a slow but effective cooling."

As for the areas, Íñiguez clarifies that the sanctions approved so far "affect, for example, some energy sectors, but they do not affect gas or not as much as they could." That is, he says, "the great opportunity that the EU has to sanction Russia once it has enough reserves, which it seems that it does." Likewise, "Russia's economic disconnection from the Union could be deepened" and even "propose, together with the United Nations, the possibility of creating a court on war crimes, or tightening entry restrictions for oligarchs or offering political asylum to those who flee from the Army. The latter is not a sanction in itself, but it also serves for the policy against Putin".

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