Kremlin demands suspension of EU sanctions on “all Russian entrepreneurs”

“ We believe that these sanctions should be lifted both for Usmanov and [Mikhail] Fridman, as well as for all entrepreneurs and all Russian citizens.”, declared the spokesperson of the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, during his daily press conference.

The Russian spokesman considered the sanctions, consisting of freezing goods and the ban on travelling through the territory of the 27 EU Member States, to be illegal.

This morning, the European Union was still at a standstill in the face of France and Luxembourg's request to remove the names of these two Russian oligarchs from the list of sanctions against Moscow and Latvia's determination to oppose the measure.

The European Union is seeking an agreement on the renewal of sanctions against Russia, blocked several days ago by a request from France to exempt the Russian-Usbek multimillionaire Alisher Usmanov, invoking “national security reasons”.

According to the Financial Times, Paris is pressing for an agreement for the release of prisoners involving several French citizens detained in Azerbaijan.

Luxembourg, for its part, requested the withdrawal of Russian businessman Mikhail Fridman from this list of sanctions if the 27 accept Usmanov's.

Ukraine found it unacceptable on Monday that the EU remove the two Russian oligarchs from the list of economic sanctions, considering that this decision will send ‘a bad signal to Russia’.

The two oligarchs, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, “were included in the list because they are part of Russia’s aggressive regime, which conducts a war of aggression against Ukraine,” the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on social network X.