The countries of the European Union (EU) approved this Wednesday the imposition of new sanctions in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including add more oligarchs, Russian politicians and their relatives to the blacklist and disconnect three Belarusian banks of the SWIFT international communication system.
To the new restrictive measures, adopted this Wednesday by the permanent representatives of the Twenty-seven, “sanctions aimed at the maritime sector” are also addedreported the French presidency of the EU on its official Twitter account.
The new measures, whose function is to “complement and align” the three rounds of sanctions already adopted and in force to date“clarify the issue of cryptocurrencies and complete the list of technologies and goods that cannot be exported,” says the French presidency.
These sanctions they will be formally adopted by the Council by written procedure with a view to their rapid publication in the Official Journal of the European Union, when they will come into force.
The new package was discussed last Friday by the foreign ministers of the Twenty-seven and, although they did not make any decisions at the time, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, said that he was going to include more Russian oligarchs on the list of sanctioned and that the banks excluded from the SWIFT system were going to be expanded.
Since the invasion began on February 24, the EU expelled seven Russian banks from the interbank system, among which are not Sberbank, the country’s largest entity, nor Gazprombank, because they process a large part of the energy operations with the block.
What’s more, froze the assets of the Russian central bank in community territory, sanctioned Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, among other high-ranking government officials, as well as the country’s military leadership.
It also imposed an airspace ban on any aircraft operated by Russian airlines, approved a trade embargo on various sectors of strategic importance to the Russian economy, and suspended the broadcasting activities in the EU of Russian state media Sputnik and Russia Today.
The EU has progressively imposed sanctions against Russia since 2014 in response to the then illegal annexation of Crimea.