The European Union is already discussing the tenth package of sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine. His objective, this time, to act against the Russian technological and military industry to limit its productive capacity, as the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, asked the Twenty-seven, and to undermine the support given by Iran by sending drones and other equipments. "For almost a year now, Russia's war of aggression has sown a wall and destruction, Putin not only wages a brutal war on the battlefield but aggressively attacks civilians. The aggressor must pay for this," the aggressor has defended. President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, during the debate held this morning in the European Parliament on the anniversary of the invasion.
Today Brussels has sent its proposal for sanctions to the capitals of the Twenty-seven with a view to its approval by the Council, at the latest, on February 24, one year after the start of the war. Like all, it must be unanimously approved; Although it has been increasingly difficult, especially when decisions have been made in the energy field, so far the EU has managed to stick together and push through all the proposals.
In the economic field, they propose new export bans valued at more than 11,000 million euros in order to "deprive the Russian economy of critical technology and industrial goods", especially those that it cannot replace by importing from third countries, for For example, electronics, specialized vehicles and spare parts for machinery, trucks and planes, as well as cranes and antennas. Exports of dual-use civil and military goods and advanced technology will also be restricted.
Specifically, the sanctions proposal presented by Von der Leyen and the EU External Action Service led by Josep Borrell seeks to control the exports of 46 new electronic components that can be used for weapons such as missiles, drones and helicopters. "With this, we will have banned all technological products that are on the battlefield and we will make sure that they do not find another way to get them," says the president of the Commission.
To do this, for the first time, Brussels proposes to apply to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and half a dozen other entities in this country the same sanctions that will be applied to Russia regarding sensitive or dual-use technologies. "This should be a strong deterrent for other companies or international intermediaries," says the president of the European Commission, who has insisted that "Iranian drones kill Ukrainian civilians." Once again, the 10th sanctions package aims to stifle the "Russian propaganda machine" by including new figures identified with spreading "toxic lies to polarize our societies" on the sanctioned list.
The sanctions against Russia since the beginning of the war are the most restrictive measures ever adopted by the EU against a third country. To ensure that they are applied correctly, Brussels wants to force banks to make public the list of Russian financial assets that they have frozen, a measure "crucial in view of the possible use of Russian assets to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine," Von stressed. der Leyen. The legal framework of this measure is complicated -for now, the only thing that arises is to make investments in the markets with these funds and collect the benefits- but the European Council has asked the EC to present proposals and locate the frozen assets of the Bank Russian Central.
During the same parliamentary debate, Borrell has defended the effectiveness of European sanctions against Russia and has compared them to arsenic. "Sanctions are a slow-acting poison like the one made from arsenic. They take time to produce their effects, but they do it and they do it irreversibly." Although "the Russian economy has not collapsed", "things are changing", thanks to the sanctions and in particular the cap on the price of Russian oil agreed by the G7 and the EU, the high representative of European Foreign Policy has emphasized. The growth rate of the Russian GDP is not what Moscow expected, in January Russian income from hydrocarbons fell by 46% compared to the previous year and the public deficit is 14 times higher than before the war.
