For Brussels, this week's agreement on a new sanctions package against Russia marks another milestone in the collective effort to undermine the economic engine sustaining Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"At a time when Ukraine has built military momentum, our sanctions continue to weaken the economic foundations of Russia's war effort," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
"We are hitting Putin where it hurts most: cutting off the financial lifelines he relies on to sustain his war," High Representative Kaja Kallas added.
But the agreement – and, perhaps more revealingly, the fraught negotiations behind it – has exposed growing cracks in the political unity underpinning the most ambitious sanctions regime in EU history.
It has also raised broader questions about how much pain member states, now in the fourth year of the war, are prepared to absorb to keep pressure on the Kremlin.
