A"frustrated" Trump sanctions Russian oil. Putin protests but doesn't back down. Unsuspecting Belgium raises its voice in the EU's economic war against Moscow. | The day

He said it regularly before and after the Anchorage meeting:"I'm disappointed," Donald Trump often repeated when speaking about Vladimir Putin and his efforts to bring him to the table to stop the war in Ukraine. The ultimatums (ten-day, twenty-day) have become penultimatums, if not"terzultimatums," if such a word existed. Now the US president has reached a small turning point: sanctions against Russian oil companies: all assets of Rosneft and Lukoil in the United States have been frozen, and US companies and citizens have been banned from doing business there. It's the culmination of a week of steps backwards on the road to negotiations, at least apparently, which saw the aborted meeting between the heads of the two diplomatic corps, Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov, and the fading of the possibility of a new face-to-face meeting between the two heads of state. Even more so now that Putin calls Trump's decision a"hostile act" (while in the background the usual Dmitry Medvedev, with his cinematic language, speaks of an"act of war"). The Kremlin leader's attitude, in any case, appears anything but destructive: he says he wants to continue"the dialogue," which "is always better than any clash, any dispute, or even more so a war." And he returns to the two-and-a-half-hour phone call he had with Trump a week ago: I agreed, he says, to both the leaders' meeting and the venue (Budapest), but"such meetings need to be well prepared. It would have been a mistake for me and the American president to approach this summit lightly, and then leave it without the expected results." In short, the game is still largely in the hands of the Russian leader.

All this is happening while China surprisingly suspends its purchases of crude oil from Russia. For Polish President Donald Tusk, one of Europe's hardliners against Russia,"this could be a turning point." Meanwhile, Lithuania reports a new violation of its airspace by Russian military aircraft.

The EU, then: today it gave the green light to the 19th package of sanctions, which concern oil and gas, but also the shadow fleet and Russian finance. The green light also goes to the freezing of Russian assets in Europe which will remain" immobilized – the conclusions read – until Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates for the damage caused by its war." The document is signed by 26 states because Viktor Orbán did not attend to celebrate – ironically – the 1956 revolution against the Soviet Union.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky still hopes that Washington can send the long-range Tomahawk missiles and Putin himself intervenes on this point, warning that the response to any attacks “would be severe, if not astonishing”, indeed “strong, if not overwhelming”.

The Ukrainian head of state was in Brussels to insist that a ceasefire is possible if more pressure is applied to Moscow. The issue of Russian assets is far from over, however. European Council President Antonio Costa talks about a political green light, but, in reality, there are many doubts. Hungary doesn't want to hear about it, Slovakia is dodging its guns, and Czechia has changed government. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever also raised his voice publicly, having entered the Council flaunting"three key demands," without which he said he was "ready to do anything" to block the project. A veto, in short. In practice, Belgium is asking for the sharing of risks and guarantees, as well as the use of Russian assets held in various European countries for the scheme, not just in Euroclear accounts. The discussion among the leaders therefore dragged on longer than expected, with the technicians busy revising the text of the conclusions and the need for various heads of state and government to hear the opinion of ECB President Christine Lagarde during the dinner."The intention," explains a diplomatic source,"was never to reach a decision today, and it would now be difficult, from a political point of view, to completely reject the conclusions." The ball will therefore, in the best-case scenario, be passed to the Commission , which between now and the next EU summit will have to put down in black and white a legal text that meets the approval of each country.