The European Union is working on a possible ban on cloud services in Russia as part of new sanctions, Reuters reported, citing an EU representative.

If a ban is imposed, it is unclear how it would affect Russia, since the leading providers of cloud services in Europe are American companies, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

European Union last week adopted a new package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus that included an oil embargo, restrictive measures against Russian banks and a ban on consulting services.

The original version of the press release about the sanctions package issued by the EU Council on 3 June also mentioned a ban on cloud services, but that reference was later removed. The sanction does not appear in the legal texts published in the EU's official journal.

A spokesman for the European Council said the initial mention of the cloud services sanctions was a "a material error" and declined to say whether it could have been prompted by a debate between EU states on the issue.

An EU official familiar with the sanctions decisions said that the cloud services measure had never been proposed by the European Commission, but added that the EU was working on introducing a ban in possible future rounds of sanctions, even though it was technically difficult.