EU adopts 22nd sanctions package against Russia after dropping two names

The bloc removed steel magnate Alisher Usmanov and banker Mikhail Fridman from the list after requests from France, Slovakia and Luxembourg. The new measures follow a harder line taken by Washington in September.

The European Union adopted its 22nd package of sanctions against Russia on 12 October 2026, adding about 1,569 individuals and entities that target the country's military-industrial complex. Agreement came only after diplomats dropped steel magnate Alisher Usmanov and banker Mikhail Fridman from the list, following exemption requests from France, Slovakia and Luxembourg.

The package keeps travel bans and asset freezes in place while broadening economic restrictions on Moscow, adopted amid uncertainty over future United States assistance to Ukraine. In October, CrossGov, a research organisation that tracks sanctions policy, reported that Hungary and Slovakia had resisted each EU sanctions package. The European Commission said alignment between EU and US sanctions pressure is impaired, because Washington has not implemented the Graham Bill.

The new package follows the 21st, which Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, presented on 9 June 2026. That package targeted energy, financial services and crypto, and also covered trade, including fisheries, with an entry ban for former Russian combatants. Von der Leyen described it at the time as aimed at the sectors with the highest impact. The Commission has said sanctions must not be lifted until Russia stops its war and Ukraine gains a just and lasting peace.

The contrast with Washington is direct. On 18 September 2026, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, signed a law targeting Russia's energy and defence industries and networks close to Putin. It requires tariffs of up to 100 percent on the buyers of Russian oil and gas that the law describes as its largest customers. The European Union has no equivalent measure of its own. The European External Action Service, the diplomatic service of the European Union, said the American law impairs the pressure on Moscow.

The European Parliament has scheduled a plenary debate for 12 November 2026 as agenda point D-51 on further EU sanctions cutting the sources that finance the Russian war.

This article was written with AI and published without an editor reading it first.