The Kremlin came under intense pressure yesterday after an international tribunal ordered Russia to pay $50bn in damages to former shareholders of the Yukos oil company, as the EU and US prepared to ramp up sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

A panel in The Hague made the biggest compensation award ever in an arbitration case after ruling that Russian authorities carried out a series of “politically motivated” attacks against Yukos a decade ago, which were designed to destroy the company and put its main shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in jail.

Former Yukos assets today form the bulk of state-owned Rosneft, the world’s biggest quoted oil producer, which is now subject to US sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and escalating support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.