EU approves new sanctions against Russia and Belarus

The European Union (EU) approved on Monday a new set of sanctions against Russia and Belarus for the invasion of Ukraine, which includes commercial and financial restrictions and adds more individuals to the community club’s blacklist.

“Approval of a fourth package of sanctions in consultation with our international partners”, said the French presidency of the Council of the EU on its official Twitter account, in reference to the new measures that the Twenty-seven have coordinated with the G7, the group of the most industrialized countries in the world.

The measures will come into force in the next few hours, once they have been published in the Official Gazette of the EU and, according to diplomatic sources, among those sanctioned is Roman Abramovich, owner of London Chelsea, whom the Premier League has removed from office .

The EU is also going to present a declaration to the World Trade Organization (WTO) with its intention to suspend Russia’s most favored nation clause in its markets and its suspension of Belarus’ application to join the institution.

As announced by the president of the European Comission, Ursula von der LeyenLast Friday, the EU will also collaborate with its international partners to suspend Moscow from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

In addition, the import of key goods in the iron and steel sector from Russia will be banned and new European investments in the entire Russian energy sector will be prohibited, as will the export of any luxury goods from the EU to Russia.

Likewise, the EU will take measures to prevent the Russian state and the country’s elites from using crypto assets to circumvent the imposed sanctions.

Some sanctions that already affect the Russian president, Vladimir Putin; the Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov; to the military leadership of the Kremlin and that, while waiting to know all the details of the new measures, they already affected more than 800 people.

Since the beginning of the invasion, on February 24, the EU countries have also frozen the assets of the central banks of Russia and Belarus and have expelled seven Russian and three Belarusian entities from the Swift international communication system.