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The EU will remove four Russian citizens from their sanction list after Hungary has threatened to block the renewal of restrictions that aim to go to more than 2,000 other people, according to people who have been informed about the decision.
At the request of Hungary, Brussels remove Gulbhaor Ismailova, the sister of Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the Russian oligarch ViaTcheslav Moshe Kantor and the Russian politician Mikhail Degtyarv, shared three civil servants.
The Russian businessman Vladimir Rosevsky is also removed from the list, but this was an application for all European countries for legal reasons, two of the officials added.
Budapest’s main application to Oligarch Mikhail Fridman and his long -time business partner Petr Aven, who was removed from the sanction list, was not agreed.
The European sanctions against around 2,400 Russian and Belarusian civil servants, politicians and business people who have supported or relieved the war in Ukraine must be renewed every six months.
This rollover is subject to the unanimous consent of the EU27 governments that give Budapest Veto power about travel restrictions and freezing of assets. The individual sanctions would have expired on Saturday.
“We had to make a call, and ultimately 2,000 people were worth more than three to the other capitals,” said one of the officials.
The success of Hungary, the most pro-Russian Member State of the EU, sparked great fears under the removal of people from the list among other countries that Budapest will block the rollover of the economic sanctions against Russia in July. These measures include the mechanism that ensures that hundreds of billions of Russian sovereign assets are immobilized in Europe.
The spokeswoman for the European Commission, Anitta Hipper, said after the approval that his sanction framework was “undermining” the ability of Moscow to wage war. Hipper also said that she could not comment on individual cases, but “we have almost 2,400 names, which is a very strong number.”
Ismailova’s brother Usmanov, a Uzbek billionaire who made his luck with Gazprom in the 1990s, built one of the largest Russia’s largest Holdings in mining, industrial and telecommunications companies.
Cantor, a great shareholder in Acron, and Rashevsky, who used to head Eurochem, are fertilizer tycoons.
Degtyarv was appointed Minister of Sport by Russian President Vladimir Putin after he had led as governor of the Khabarovsk region in Russia’s Far East, which had previously come from mass protests.
Additional reporting from Anastasia StoGnei in Berlin
