White House officials said a key part of the announcements in Brussels would be new enforcement measures aimed at making sure that Russia is not able to evade the intended impact of sanctions.
“That announcement will focus not just on adding new sanctions,” Mr. Sullivan said, “but on ensuring that there is a joint effort to crack down on evasion on sanctions-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine, weaken or get around the sanctions.”
He added later, “So stay tuned for that.”
Sanctions experts have suggested that Western allies could allow Russian energy exports to continue but insist that payments be held in escrow accounts until Mr. Putin halts the invasion. That would borrow from the playbook the United States used with Iran, when it allowed some oil exports but required the revenue from those transactions to be held in accounts that could be used only to finance bilateral trade.
The United States and Europe could also broaden their sanctions on Russia’s financial sector and target its major energy companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, without banning oil and gas exports. Such a move would hamper future energy exploration projects and inflict longer-term damage on its production capacity, American officials have said.
Biden administration officials have said they crafted the sanctions on Russia to allow for its energy exports to proceed, acknowledging Europe’s reliance on Russian oil and gas and arguing that disrupting the market could have an adverse impact on the global economy.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments
Card 1 of 4Russia’s shrinking force. The Pentagon said that Russia’s “combat power” in Ukraine has dipped below 90 percent of its original force. The assessment reflects the significant losses that Russian troops have suffered at the hands of Ukrainian soldiers.
On the ground. Amid Russia’s stalled invasion, Ukrainians continued to mount a spirited defense of Kyiv and said they had recaptured Makariv, a town about 40 miles away from the capital. In Kherson, videos and photographs showed Russian soldiers opening fire on protesters.
Cracking down on dissent. A Russian court sentenced the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, already serving a two-and-a-half-year prison term for violating parole, to an additional nine years on fraud charges. Russia also amended a draconian censorship law to expand the scope of government bodies off-limits to criticism.
Biden’s diplomatic push. President Biden will press allies for even more aggressive economic sanctions against Russia during a series of global summits in Europe this week, seeking to maintain unity of purpose as Russian forces continue to rain destruction on cities in Ukraine.
In recent days, European leaders have come under increasing pressure from the U.S. administration as well as a core group of hard-liners within their ranks — including Poland and the smaller Baltic nations — to impose an oil embargo on Russia.
But ahead of the meetings on Thursday, European Union leaders did not appear to be heading toward such a move, which would hit Germany, the bloc’s de facto leader and biggest economy, hardest.