EU countries on Tuesday took oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman off a renewed Russia sanctions list in a move condemned by Ukraine as “shameful”.
A deal to extend the sanctions against some 3,000 individuals and entities, including President Vladimir Putin, was agreed just ahead of a Tuesday deadline when Latvia agreed to drop its veto opposing French efforts to secure the exemptions, diplomats said. Shortly after the deal was announced, Kulbergs said that France had agreed to start talks on extending its nuclear deterrent to Latvia and on increasing its air force presence in the Baltic state.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga called the EU move “shameful and unjustifiable”. In between meetings at the UN General Assembly in New York, President Volodymyr Zelenksy called the move a “concession” to the Kremlin. “At a time when Russia is carrying out brutal attacks on our people and even now, during the UN General Assembly, air raid alerts are ongoing in many regions because of drones and ballistic missiles signals about lifting sanctions on individual Russian oligarchs are self-defeating and counterproductive,” Zelensky said on social media. A spokesman for Ireland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said the “compromise” would extend the sanctions regime until September 22, 2029. “It really sends the signal that you can blackmail your way to delisting,” said one EU diplomat talking on condition of anonymity. “It was not a choice between a good solution and a bad one, but between a bad one and a far worse one,” Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs said of his country’s opposition to the sanctions exemptions.
