February 7, 2025 UPDATE 2

A roundup of local and world news

Newsroom, 07.02.2025, 18:27

G7 – The Foreign Ministers of Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania and Sweden have submitted a joint letter calling on G7 states to take additional measures to reduce the revenues obtained by Moscow from the sale of its energy carriers. “With these revenues, Russia finances its ongoing aggression in Ukraine, considering a third of Russia’s revenues and two thirds of its exports are linked to energy carriers”, reads a statement of the Romanian Foreign Ministry published on Friday. According to the quoted source, the 12 states “have consistently supported the adoption of the toughest possible restrictive measures against Russia”. G7 states are thus encouraged to use the oil price cap to ensure that it continues to serve as a significant tool in limiting Russia’s revenue flows, to impose additional sanctions on Moscow’s “shadow fleet” and the actors involved, and to consider additional measures targeting the maritime transport of Russian exports, the Romanian MFA also states.

ICC – The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday strongly condemned the sanctions imposed on its staff by U.S. President Donald Trump, which have sparked protests in the UN and some European states. Dozens of countries have warned the sanctions could “increase the risk of impunity for the most serious crimes and threaten to undermine the international principles of the rule of law”. “The sanctions will seriously undermine all pending investigations, as the Court may be forced to close its field offices”, representatives of 79 countries, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the ICC’s members, have pointed out in a joint statement. The U.S. president signed an executive order on Thursday banning entry into the USA of IIC staff and freezing all their assets in the United States. According to the White House, the ICC has engaged in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”, referring to investigations into alleged war crimes by American soldiers in Afghanistan and Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. According to experts, the U.S. sanctions could have a crippling effect on the ICC’s activity. (VP)