Ukraine War: Hungary forced EU sanctions against Russians

With his veto law, Hungary has forced the cancellation of EU sanctions against several Russians. The people who will no longer be on the EU sanctions list in the future include the oligarch Wjatscheslaw Moske Kantor, as several diplomats of the German Press Agency confirmed. In addition, a sister of the well -known Russian entrepreneur Alischer Usmanow and two other people benefit from the procedure of Hungary.

According to diplomats, pressure has been the need to extend Russia sanctions against more than 2,200 other people and organizations until this Saturday. The decision for this required a unanimous decision of the 27 EU member states. Hungary threatened to block it unless several Russians are removed from the list. Originally, the country had even called for the sanctions to be lifted against nine people.

Orbán does not consider Russia sanctions to be expedient

The exact background of the Hungarian approach is unclear. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had already stated several times that he generally does not consider the EU’s Russia sanctions to be expedient.

The EU sanctions usually include travel limits, freezing assets and the ban on providing funds or other economic resources. In most cases, they were imposed against Ukraine in response to the unjustified and groundless military aggression of Russia from an EU perspective.

The risk of Hungary’s advance

There had been discussions about the demands of Hungary for weeks because a number of Member States did not want to accept them at first. The risk of lifting the sanctions could give other Russians arguments for complaints against punitive measures.

For example, the sanction decision against Kantor said that this had close connections to President Vladimir Putin, who had helped him secure his considerable assets. Because of his good relationships with the Kremlin, he benefited from Russian decision -makers who were responsible for the illegal annexation of the Crimea peninsula by Russia or the destabilization of Ukraine. According to the EU, Kantor is a great shareholder of one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers in Russia.

Only one personnel was undisputed

According to diplomats, only the lifting of sanctions against Vladimir Raschewski, which used to be managing director and director of the mineral fertilizer, was comparatively undisputed. Last July he also won a lawsuit before the EU court against EU decisions against him.

The top representative of the EU did not respond to the problems with Hungary in their public communication on Friday. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even spoke of the fact that the pressure against Russia would be increased. “Our determination to support Ukraine is crucial,” she wrote on the X.