The European Union extended sanctions against Russia because of Ukraine

The European Union has extended economic sanctions against RUSSIA, imposed in 2014 in connection with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass. This was announced by the President of the European Council Charles Michel on Twitter.

“We have extended our economic sanctions against Russia: Moscow must do its part and ensure the full implementation of the Minsk agreements,” Michel wrote.

He noted that the EU will adhere to a unified approach to Russia based on five principles, and will work out new formats and conditions for dialogue with Moscow in the near future.

We are talking about sectoral sanctions aimed at the Russian energy, financial sector and defense industry. They prohibit companies from accessing European capital markets, prohibit the EXPORT and import of weapons and dual-use goods, and trade in technologies for oil production.

The sanctions were first introduced in July 2014, and since then the EU authorities have extended them every six months. Before that, they check how Russia is implementing the Minsk agreements, the purpose of which is to resolve the war in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it is not a party to the conflict, and therefore should not comply with the Minsk agreements. Kyiv considers Russia an aggressor country and claims that the authorities of the unrecognized DPR and LPR are supported by Moscow.

Russia and Ukraine regularly exchange accusations of unwillingness to implement the Minsk agreements. Kyiv believes that this format for resolving an armed conflict is outdated and should be revised.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, said in June that the fact that Russian passports were issued to residents of the Donbass republics was a sufficient reason for revising the agreements. He explained that holding elections in the region (one of the clauses of the Minsk agreements), when 630,000 people have Russian passports, is a “strange situation.”

President Vladimir Putin has previously stated that Kiev does not want to fulfill its part of the agreements. “Today’s Kyiv authorities simply have no desire to fulfill the Minsk agreements,” the head of state said. He explained his words by the fact that the Ukrainian authorities, under the terms of Minsk, should conduct a direct dialogue with the leaders of the LPR and DPR, but they do not want to make contact.