Good morning. From today, an EU and G7 price cap of $60 a barrel for Russian oil will put unprecedented new limits on Vladimir Putin’s ability to fund his war machine. Meanwhile, a ban on importing any Urals oil within the EU will further limit the market for Russian crude. This might sound technical and obscure. But taken together, the two measures are arguably the biggest intervention by buyers in global oil markets in modern history.
As significant as they are, these steps raise many questions. Will they increase overall global oil prices – which rose slightly this morning - and push inflation further up? Will countries like China and India fall in line? And will they really hit Russia where it hurts – or do they fall short of what’s needed to have an impact on the ground in Ukraine? Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour, is about what the key players want the strategy to achieve – and how Putin might react. Here are the headlines – and for the details of England’s victory over Senegal in last night’s knockout match, scroll down to the World Cup section.
