The European Commission's 21st sanctions package, presented by foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas, would impose asset freezes on close to 90 Russian banks and add transaction bans on more than 30 in Russia and third countries — pushing the number of banned lenders past 100, more than half of Russia's internationally connected institutions. [1] It adds 11 crypto platforms accused of helping Moscow evade restrictions, plus oil traders, refineries and third-country firms; the EU aims to approve it by mid-July. [2]

Yesterday's account noted that European intelligence put Russia's non-performing loans near the 10 percent crisis threshold while the central bank claimed 4 percent, and that the paper would note the discrepancy without arbitrating it. That holds. Kallas frames the package as collapsing the war economy's foundations "brick by brick." [1] Russian officials call the distress figures inflated.

The divergence splits cleanly: Ukrainian X reads sanctions finally biting; Russian accounts read theater that third countries route around. The paper waits for the balance-sheet receipt. Cutting more than half of Russia's cross-border banking rails is a large action on paper. Whether it reaches the ruble, a deposit run, or a named lender's failure — or whether third-country intermediaries neutralize it — is the only test that settles the question. The financing tail of the war is real when it lands on a balance sheet with a dated number, and not before.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow