BRUSSELS — Gathering in Brussels, European foreign ministers scrambled on Thursday to hold a united front against Russia over Ukraine, calming worries that the election of a far-left government in Greece hostile to sanctions could upend Europe’s policy toward Moscow.
This week’s victory of the anti-establishment Syriza party in Greece had been widely seen as enhancing dogged but previously unsuccessful efforts by Russia to divide members of the European Union and undermine the bloc’s sanctions policy.
In the end, however, Greece backed away from strong statements denouncing sanctions and joined other countries in the 28-member bloc in a unanimous vote in favor of expanding a list of sanctioned individuals, mostly Russians, and of work to prepare “any further action” to pressure combatants to respect a stillborn truce agreement from last year.
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The European Union’s sanctions policy has already imposed travel and financial restrictions on prominent Russians close to President Vladimir V. Putin and tightly restricted access to Europe’s capital markets by Russian banks and energy companies.
But Greece’s opposition to the sanctions had stirred fears that the new government would undermine what, since last summer, has been an unusual display of unity by Europe’s normally fractious and indecisive nations.
Greece has the Eastern Orthodox faith in common with Russia, and its people often view Moscow with far more sympathy than do most other Europeans, particularly those in countries invaded or occupied by the Soviet Union. Russia has sought to cultivate ties with anti-establishment parties on both the left and right, seeing them as a useful battering ram against the European Union’s stand on Ukraine. But Syriza is the first of these political groups to gain power, and its victory, said Ms. Paul, the analyst, will be an important test of “whether Putin’s strategy of divide and rule works.”
