The approval of the seventh wave of EU economic sanctions by the 27 member states on Thursday morning was praised by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as a “strong message”. The EU’s “enhanced, prolonged sanctions against the Kremlin” send “a strong message to Moscow: we will keep the pressure up as long as necessary,” Von der Leyen wrote on Twitter. In Kyiv, however, Ukraine’s president bristled at the EU’s gradual moves, where the central concern for politicians and officials in recent days has been the Russian threat to gas supplies this winter. “This is not enough, and I tell my partners that frankly,” Zelensky said in a midnight speech in response to the latest round. “Russia must feel a much higher price for war to compel her to pursue peace.” The latest measures agreed in Brussels are nicknamed the “six and a half package” because of their limited ambition. On Monday, Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, admitted that leaders were increasingly concerned that the bloc’s sanctions were self-inflicted. “There is a lot of debate about whether sanctions are effective, whether sanctions affect us more than Russia,” he said. “Some European leaders said the sanctions were wrong, they were wrong. Well, I don’t think it was a mistake.” Those concerns were reflected in the relatively modest set of measures, including a ban on Russian gold imports, agreed by written procedure on Thursday morning. The G7, the world’s seven largest economies, including the UK, France, Germany and Italy, have already banned imports of Russian gold, but this will now be enforced across the EU. Forty-eight individuals and nine entities have also been targeted. According to a draft paper released ahead of official approval, they include Russia’s largest lender SberBank and actors Vladimir Mashkov, who appeared in the 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines and the 2011 film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol , and Sergey Bezrukov. Muskov had also “appeared during the propaganda rally in support of the illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine, which took place on March 18, 2022 at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow,” according to the leaked text. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Also on the list is Andrey Bobrowskyi, who is described as “a member of the nationalist Nightwolves MC motorcycle club and leader of the Roads for Victory branch of Nightwolves MC.” The EU alleges that Bobrowskyi “organized several Nightwolves rallies in Berlin, Poland and Russia” in support of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Full details of the sanctions measures will be published this week in the EU’s official journal. In addition to the restrictive measures, the EU has also decided to provide €500m (£420m) in military aid to Ukraine.
