EU Agrees to Blacklist 1,600 More People and Firms Over Russia's War

European Union ambassadors meeting in Brussels agreed on Wednesday to add 1,646 people and companies to the bloc's sanctions lists over Russia's war in Ukraine, diplomats said, the largest single expansion of the EU's Russia-related blacklist since Moscow's full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

The deal, reached in the Committee of Permanent Representatives, still needs formal sign-off. EU foreign ministers are expected to adopt it without further debate when they meet in Luxembourg on Monday, after which the names will be published in the bloc's Official Journal and the sanctions take legal effect.

A Political Deal in Brussels

The new listings target 743 individuals and 826 entities accused of supporting Russia's military-industrial complex or the broader war effort, according to reporting from Brussels on the ambassadors' agreement. A further 77 names belong to candidates who stood in Russia's State Duma election last month in parts of Ukraine that Moscow occupies and claims to have annexed.

Those 77 listings make good on a pledge the EU's diplomatic service made weeks earlier. In a statement issued after the vote, the bloc's high representative said on behalf of the EU that it "does not and will never recognise" ballots held on Ukrainian soil under occupation, and warned that organizers and candidates in those contests would face sanctions, according to the EU's official statement on the Duma vote. The election was held September 18-20 across Russia and, separately, in Crimea, Sevastopol and occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

The Numbers Behind the Deal

Once the package is formally adopted, the EU's cumulative list of Russia-linked individuals and entities under sanction will grow to nearly 4,650 names, up roughly a third from its current size. The listings carry a travel ban, an asset freeze and a prohibition on making funds or economic resources available to those named.

The scale of the addition is unusual even by the standards of a sanctions regime that has grown steadily for more than a decade. Diplomats cited by Euronews described it as the bloc's biggest single expansion of the Russia list since the invasion began, eclipsing the additions made in each of the EU's twenty-one numbered sanctions packages adopted since 2022. Unlike those packages, which typically target sectors such as energy, finance or dual-use technology, Wednesday's move adds names to the EU's long-running individual sanctions regime, formally known as Council Decision 2014/145/CFSP, which covers people and organizations deemed responsible for undermining Ukraine's sovereignty.

A Vote Moscow Calls Legitimate, Europe Does Not

The timing reflects two converging tracks in Brussels this autumn. One is the EU's response to the September Duma election, which Kyiv and its allies denounced as an attempt to normalize Russian control over occupied territory. The other is the scheduled, once-every-few-months review of the EU's broader individual sanctions regime against those tied to the war.

That review concluded less than three weeks ago. On September 22, the Council extended the underlying sanctions regime — which already covered more than 3,000 individuals and entities — for 36 months, an unusually long renewal compared with the six-month cycles used in earlier years, according to the EU's account of the September renewal. In the same review, the Council quietly dropped Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from the list, along with one other individual, one company and three people who had died. The delistings followed requests from France, Slovakia and Luxembourg and were tied, according to diplomats, to a prisoner exchange brokered by Azerbaijan and other Turkic states in which one French citizen held in Russia was freed; a second remains imprisoned.

High Representative Kaja Kallas, the EU's top diplomat, signaled in mid-August that a far larger package was coming, telling the German newspaper Die Welt that EU sanctions had already cost Russia's war effort more than a trillion euros and that she intended to propose the broadest list of designations since the invasion began, timed for the autumn, as Euronews reported at the time.

"And I do not see this on these two persons happening any time soon," Kallas said, when asked whether Usmanov and Fridman might eventually be relisted.

Reaction, Exemptions and What Comes Next

Member states had additional reasons to show unity this week. Officials pointed to a string of hybrid incidents across the bloc this year, including an explosive-laden drone found near a runway at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany in early August that forced the diversion of a cargo flight and prompted a counterterrorism investigation, as described in coverage of the airport incident. German authorities have not formally attributed the device, but several capitals have pointed to a pattern of suspected Russian-linked sabotage, and diplomats said work on the new listings accelerated in response.

Kallas, asked about how the list is compiled, said member states retain the final say over additions. "Countries are free to put forward names that should be included in the sanctions list," she said, adding that unanimous approval from all 27 capitals is still required for every designation — a requirement the European Commission has separately proposed loosening through a mechanism known as the passerelle clause, which would move some foreign-policy decisions, including sanctions, to qualified-majority voting. Diplomats note the clause itself can currently only be activated by unanimous vote, a circularity that has so far kept it unused.

The Monday meeting in Luxembourg coincides with other movement in the EU's Ukraine policy. Hungary, whose new government under Prime Minister Péter Magyar unseated Viktor Orbán's administration in April elections, has signaled it will allow two further chapters of Ukraine's EU membership talks to open once Ukraine's parliament passes a minority-rights law protecting ethnic Hungarians, a condition Budapest has pressed since the spring. Kyiv's government has said the overall accession process, in which it opened its first negotiating cluster in June, is moving faster than for any previous candidate country, though Hungary's continued caution over the pace has repeatedly slowed the timetable.

For now, the practical effect of Wednesday's deal falls on the 1,646 people and firms named, who will find their EU assets frozen and travel to the bloc barred once ministers sign off on Monday. For the 77 candidates from the occupied Duma vote, the measure is as much symbolic as financial: a formal EU refusal, backed by sanctions, to treat Russia's claimed annexation of those territories as settled fact. Diplomats say the published list, once released, will be the clearest signal yet of who in Moscow's orbit the bloc considers most responsible for prolonging a war now in its fifth year.