By Sean Goulding Carroll

The steady stream of EU sanctions against Russia continues. While commentators are hoping for a swift, clean blow to the Kremlin in the form of a gas and oil import ban, EU leaders have opted for a piecemeal approach – more Chinese water torture than firing squad.

The latest offering announced on Friday April 8, the fifth such round of sanctions, sees a ban on Russian coal and the prohibition of Russian-flagged ships from docking at EU ports. Russian and Belarusian road transport operators are also banned from working in the EU.

Additionally, there is a freeze on the export of transport equipment, including jet fuel. This complements the bloc-wide airspace ban on Russian aircraft in place since late February.

When it comes to shipping and freight, the ban is not absolute, however – lawmakers included exemptions for “medical, food, energy, and humanitarian purposes”.

This means that Russian ships containing crude oil are more than welcome to offload at EU docks; ships loaded up with vodka and caviar, however, must return home.

“Our focus is clear – we are not targeting ordinary Russian people. We are targeting the Kremlin, the political and economic elites supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine,” said EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell (of course, a ban on caviar and high-end Russian spirits is also likely to hit the EU’s elite).

So, what of banning Russian oil and gas, the lifeblood of the Russian economy and the chief instrument through which Russia funds the invasion of Ukraine? Plans are in the works, according to EU officials, at least for oil.

As fresh horrors in Bucha and Mariupol come to light, pressure to impose energy sanctions is mounting. Each day of delay sees euros flow into the Russian war machine.

However, EU countries are far from united on the issue of Russian oil. While some, including the Netherlands, Ireland, and Lithuania, push for oil sanctions, others have yet to be convinced.

Germany is among those fretting over the potential cost such a ban would entail. The EU’s economic powerhouse is highly exposed to Russian energy shocks, having become reliant on Moscow’s fossil fuels.

Unsurprisingly, Germany’s reluctance to suffer economic pain to correct a past mistake has provoked anger among member states who saw their economies collapse during the European debt crisis.

They recall the German-led insistence during the financial crisis of the previous decade on rapid and deep cuts to public spending as a necessary tonic to profligate spending (or in the case of Ireland, the public assuming vast amounts of private banking debt).

Calls to mitigate the economic hit by spreading it out were dismissed. “There is a trade-off between short-term pain and long-term gain,” then-finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble wrote in the Financial Times in 2011.

The economic misery, the shuttering of businesses, and wide-scale migration were written off as unfortunate side-effects of the need to quickly right the economic ship.

Now Germany finds itself faced with a situation as unpalatable as that endured by the so-called “PIIGS” of Europe a decade ago.

The next round of sanctions will be telling. For the EU to keep its title as a peace project, a ban on the shipping of caviar and vodka should be little more than a prelude – an oil ban will hit Putin where it hurts.