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The EU will remove four Russian nationals from its sanctions list after Hungary threatened to block the renewal of restrictions targeting more than 2,000 other individuals, according to people briefed on the decision.
At the request of Hungary, Brussels will remove Gulbahor Ismailova, the sister of Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, Russian oligarch Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor and Russian politician Mikhail Degtyarev, three officials told the Financial Times.
Russian businessman Vladimir Rashevsky will also be removed from the list, but this was a request of all European countries for legal reasons, two of the officials added.
Budapest’s main request for oligarch Mikhail Fridman and his longtime business partner Petr Aven to be removed from the sanctions list was not agreed.
The European sanctions on some 2,400 Russian and Belarusian officials, politicians and businessmen who supported or facilitated the war in Ukraine have to be renewed every six months.
That rollover is subject to unanimous approval of the EU’s 27 governments, which gives Budapest veto power over travel restrictions and asset freeze orders. The individual sanctions would have expired on Saturday.
“We had to make a call, and ultimately 2,000 people was worth more to the other capitals than three,” said one of the officials.
The success of Hungary, the EU’s most pro-Moscow member state, in removing the people from the list has raised high fears among other countries that Budapest will block the rollover of economic sanctions against Russia in July. These measures include the mechanism that ensures hundreds of billions of Russian sovereign assets are immobilised in Europe.
European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper said after the approval that its sanctions framework was “undermining” Moscow’s ability to wage war. Hipper also said she could not comment on individual cases, but “we have almost 2,400 names, which is a very strong number”.
Ismailova’s brother Usmanov, an Uzbek-Russian billionaire who made his fortune with Gazprom in the 1990s, built one of Russia’s largest mining, industry and telecoms holdings.
Kantor, a large shareholder in Acron, and Rashevsky, who used to run EuroChem, are fertiliser tycoons.
Degtyarev was appointed sports minister by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year after a stint as governor of the Khabarovsk region in the country’s far east, which was previously wracked by mass protests.
Additional reporting by Anastasia Stognei in Berlin
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