On Tuesday 20 May, the Foreign Affairs Council adopted sanctions against several hundred individuals, entities and vessels in the ‘shadow fleet’, under four measures regimes.
Ministers adopted the 17th set of measures relating to the war in Ukraine. It includes measures against 189 vessels of the ‘shadow fleet’ and shipping companies responsible for transporting crude oil and oil products by sea, and engaging in dangerous practices at sea while transporting Russian oil, including entities from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Hong Kong. Surgutneftegaz, a major Russian oil producer, and Insurance Joint Stock Company ‘VSK’, an insurer in the Russian oil sector, are both subject to measures.
The EU is also imposing sanctions on more than 45 Russian entities and individuals supplying the Russian army with drones, weapons, ammunition, military equipment, critical components and logistical support. Three Chinese entities - one of which is state-owned -, one Belarussian and one Israeli supplying components deemed essential to the Russian army, in particular for the production of drones, have been sanctioned.
Thirty-one new entities providing direct or indirect support to the Russian military-industrial complex or involved in circumventing sanctions are now subject to tighter export restrictions on dual-use goods and technologies. Of these, 18 are based in Russia and 13 in third countries (six in Turkey, three in Vietnam, two in the United Arab Emirates, one in Serbia and one in Uzbekistan).
The EU has also introduced further restrictions on exports of goods that contribute to Russia’s military and technological enhancement, including chemical precursors to energetic materials and spare parts and components for high-precision computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools.
In connection with Russia’s destabilising actions abroad, the Council adopted restrictive measures against 21 individuals and 6 entities, including those deemed responsible for pro-Russian and anti-Western propaganda, such as ‘Voice of Europe’ and one of its financiers, Viktor Medvedchuk, the Turkish media company AFA Medya and its founder, Hüseyin Doğru, Viktor Loukovenko, director of the African Initiative press agency, and Justin Blaise Tagouh, CEO of the International Africa Media press group. The Federal State Unitary Enterprise ‘Main Radio Frequency Center’ and its acting director, Ruslan Nesterenko, “responsible for actions of electronic warfare” affecting the GPS signal in Baltic States and disrupting civil aviation, but also individuals involved in activities aimed at undermining the democratic political process in Estonia and Germany, and Stark Industries, a web hosting service, its CEO, Iurie Neculiti, and its owner, Ivan Neculiti.
Two fishing companies, Norebo JSC and Murman Sea Food, “which are part of a Russia-state sponsored surveillance campaign that have conducted espionage missions and sabotage critical infrastructure, including undersea cables” are affected by the measures.
The EU has also broadened the scope of the sanctions regime relating to Russia’s destabilising activities to target not only tangible assets linked to these activities, but also transactions of credit institutions, financial institutions and entities providing crypto-assets services.
The Council also decided to impose additional restrictive measures against three Russian entities involved in the development and use of chemical weapons because of the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare by Russian forces in Ukraine, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia is a party. These are the ‘Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops’, the 27th Scientific Centre and the 33rd Central Scientific Research and Testing Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence, all belonging to the Russian armed forces.
Finally, the EU has imposed restrictive measures on 28 individuals - judges, prosecutors, representatives of the Supreme Court and regional courts, members of the Investigative Committee - involved in the “fabrication of the cases” against various activists and thus deemed by the Council to be “responsible for serious violations of human rights, the repression of democratic opposition, and activities seriously undermining the rule of law in Russia”.
See the legal acts: https://aeur.eu/f/gwq (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)