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The EU will remove four Russian citizens from its sanctions list, according to those who described the decision after Hungary threatened to block updates to restrictions targeting more than 2,000 other individuals.
At the Hungarian request, Brussels will remove Uzbek Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, Russian oligarch Moshe Kantor and Russian politician Mikhail Degutylev’s sister, Gurbahl Ismailova, sister to Uzbek Russian politician Mikhail Degutylev, three officials told the Financial Times.
Russian businessman Vladimir Rashevsky will also be removed from the list, but this was a request from all European countries on legal grounds, the two officials added.
It was not agreed that the main requests for Budapest oligarch Mikhail Fridman and his longtime business partner Petr Aven would be removed from the sanctions list.
European sanctions against the approximately 2,400 Russians and Belarusian officials, politicians and businessmen who supported or promoted the war in Ukraine must be updated every six months.
That rollover will be subject to unanimous approval of the EU’s 27 governments, which will grant Budapest a veto over travel restrictions and assets freeze orders. Individual sanctions would have expired on Saturday.
“We had to call, but in the end there were 2,000 people worth more than three people than the other capital,” the official said.
Hungary, the EU’s most pro-Moscow member state, has caused high fear among other countries that Budapest blocked the overthrow of sanctions against Russia in July by removing people from the list. These measures include mechanisms that ensure that hundreds of billions of Russian sovereign assets are fixed in Europe.
European Commission spokesman Anitta Hipper said after approval the sanctions framework would “weak” Moscow’s ability to carry war. Hipper also said that although he could not comment on individual cases, “We have almost 2,400 names, which is a very strong number.”
Usmanov, a Uzbek Russian billionaire Ismailova, who built his fortune at Gazprom in the 1990s, built one of Russia’s largest mining, industrial and communications holdings.
Rashevsky, the largest shareholder of Acron, and the runners of Eurochem, are fertilizer tycoons.
Degtyarev was appointed Minister of Sports by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year after his stint as governor of the Khabarovsk region of the Far East.
Additional report by Anastasia Stongnei in Berlin
