The European Union joined much of the Western world this week and announced harsh sanctions against Russia, which has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Aggressive measures were needed because, as many global politicians put it, Putin has “brought war back to Europe” on a scale the continent has not seen since the Second World War.

Hundreds have already died, and, within hours, Russian troops had already entered the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

With NATO’s apparent reluctance to engage in military action for now, Ukraine’s fate seems to be sealed, and the country could fall within a few days.

Now, the West cannot simply declare war on Russia given that both sides have massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the prospect of an atomic World War Three should be avoided at all costs. What policians can do at this stage is to impose sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy in a bid to force the Russian Bear to retreat.

The EU has already announced a raft of sanctions against Moscow, targeting projects, companies and wealthy individuals. Germany, for example, has cancelled a planned massive gas pipeline project.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola later urged European countries to close golden passports loopholes which are allowing Russians to gain more than a foothold in Europe. “The Kremlin has long thought it could buy its way into Europe. It is time to close any loopholes, end the dangerous phenomenon of golden passports that provide a backdoor to European citizenship and ensure that Russian money does not become as critical as Russian gas,” she said.

The Maltese government says it stands foursquare with its European counterparts, but then again it has remained silent on the issue of sales of Maltese passports to wealthy Russian individuals. If Russian business owners buy Maltese, and ergo European, passports, this will provide them with a way of circumventing European sanctions. Essentially, Malta is giving them access to a loophole around the sanctions.

When questioned about this earlier this week, just hours before he flew to Brussels to discuss the Ukraine crisis with his European counterparts, Prime Minister Robert Abela was evasive when asked whether the sale of Maltese passports to Russian citizens would stop.

And, just a few hours earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne inaugurated a new health centre that has been built with funds coming from Malta’s contentious golden visa scheme. This was the second time this week that the government announced a project funded by passport sales, the other being the Victor Calvagna garden in Mosta.

Having government ministers boasting about all the projects that are being financed by the profits of passport sales is hardly an indication that Malta intends to stop the project.

For months, the European Commission and various other entities have been calling on Malta and Cyprus to scrape the schemes, but the Maltese government has been headstrong and insists this is a matter of national competency.

But if that was the case in the past, it no longer is. Malta risks tarnishing its reputation further and angering the EU and, indeed, the entire West if it will continue allowing Russian oligarchs and companies to circumvent sanctions by buying a Maltese/EU passport.

A few days ago, the UK’s Telegraph reported that there were concerns that Russia planning to use Malta as a naval base from where to launch military operations. The government was quick to downplay these concerns, and the Prime Minister asserted that no such thing will happen and that Malta will stick to its neutrality.

But the Prime Minister failed to address the parts of the Telegraph article that said that a quarter of the people buying a Maltese passport – which is providing a “soft entry-point” to the EU and its financial markets – are Russian.

All the Prime Minister said was that Malta’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “in line” with the rest of the European Union.

So why then has the government not outright declared that it will be stopping the passport scheme, or at least that it will, for the time being bar Russian nationals from applying and acquiring the scarlet document?

Words of condemnation and solidarity with the Ukrainian people mean nothing if Malta is to continue with the nefarious practice of selling passports. The scheme has already brought enough shame on us at it is. If we continue to operate it now, in the midst of a war involving Russia, the repercussions on Malta could be much more drastic.

It is also pertinent to note that, in its own electoral manifesto, the PN is not saying that it will scrap the investment scheme, but rather that it will amend it.

For a start, it is shocking that the PN, after years of criticising the scheme, will not scrap it. But the least the PN should do now is to declare that the sale of passports to Russian individuals would stop, in order for such a scheme to be fully compliant with sanctions issued Moscow.