EU Sanctions Renewal Stalls Over Push to Remove Two Billionaires

EU ambassadors failed early on 22 September 2026 to agree a plan to remove Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from the sanctions list in exchange for renewing broader EU restrictions on nearly 3,000 people and companies accused of enabling Russia's war on Ukraine.

It was the third meeting in about 24 hours among envoys from all 27 member states. Without agreement, the listings were set to lapse at the end of Tuesday 22 September 2026, according to The Guardian. The deadline had already been extended by one week.

The listings at risk include Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Duma deputies, Russia's major banks, energy companies and military industrial complex. Extension requires agreement by all members, like a subscription that only continues if everyone says yes. The package covers the individual designations that allow asset freezes and travel bans linked to the war.

Latvia became the block. It opposed de-listings demanded by France and Slovakia, stopping a compromise meant to preserve the rest of the measures.

France had sought lifting measures on Usmanov after pressure from Azerbaijan, as reported by Reuters on 16 September. Usmanov, described as an Uzbek-Russian businessman on the blacklist, was listed after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By 21 September, envoys were described as nearing a deal to break the impasse over the French request as part of a six-month renewal, Euronews reported. That renewal debate had run since at least mid-September, when envoys extended the measures by seven days while talks continued on a longer rollover.

The dispute sits inside a larger system of limits. The EU has imposed restrictive measures on Russia since March 2014 in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in 2022, according to the Council of the EU. It has adopted 21 packages against Russia, with the 19th adopted on 23 October 2025, the 20th on 23 April 2026 and the 21st on 23 July 2026. Parallel measures target Belarus, Iran and North Korea over support for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on the night of 21 September and discussed Russia's strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Macron said France is strengthening Ukraine's air defence with a signed contract for delivery of radars and supply of interceptors. He also said he had discussed Ukraine support with U.S. President Trump, including the prospect of an energy truce and a moratorium in the Black Sea.

That discussion followed a Russian ballistic-missile attack that Ukraine's Naftogaz said caused critical damage to an oil and gas facility in the Poltava region, making restoration effectively impossible.

The broader context here is that individual removals have become bargaining tools to win consensus for the whole regime. That leverage works in both directions. Any member state with a demand can block thousands of listings, and opponents of that removal can do the same in reverse. The risk is not only a lapse but a pattern, where each renewal links national interests and outside lobbying to shared measures, with added legal risks in EU courts. With energy sites now central to the fighting and to limited truce talks, failure to extend finance, energy and defence listings would weaken the EU position as Paris and Washington test partial de-escalation.