The Council measures announced on 12 October target 826 companies and 743 executives. Unlike earlier sanctions targeting political figures, the latest listings reach deeper into the industrial supply chains needed to manufacture missiles, drones, aircraft and ammunition.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said more than half the new listings concerned ballistic missile production. The Council identified electronics manufacturers, semiconductor suppliers, radar specialists, navigation equipment firms and producers of explosives.
These businesses occupy positions in production networks that enable Russia to sustain the manufacture of weapons despite restrictions on its access to Western technologies. The Council announcement estimates their combined annual turnover at at least €20 billion and employment at more than 250,000.
The move follows intensive Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities and energy installations. European governments increasingly seek to undermine Moscow’s operational capacity by identifying businesses that procure or manufacture components for its armed forces.
Listed firms face asset freezes, while EU businesses and citizens cannot make funds or economic resources available to them. The named executives also face travel restrictions. Suppliers and financial institutions will need to check commercial transactions for links to sanctioned entities.
The actual impact on Russian output remains uncertain. Businesses with few assets in Europe may experience limited immediate disruption. Moscow has developed alternative procurement channels through third countries, some involving intermediaries that acquire electronics or equipment originally manufactured elsewhere.
Sanctions effectiveness therefore depends on customs intelligence, financial due diligence, international cooperation and the willingness of commercial partners to stop dealing with listed companies. Targeting managers individually is also intended to raise the personal costs of directing Russia’s military production.
Precision navigation systems, sophisticated electronics and specialised manufacturing technology remain difficult to substitute rapidly. Nevertheless, listing a supplier cannot by itself prevent components from moving through indirect trading routes.
The sanctions coincide with renewed discussion of a possible halt to attacks on energy infrastructure. Brussels is signalling that negotiations about the war’s conduct need not entail relief from restrictions on Russia’s defence economy.
Whether the measures reduce missile production will depend on changes in procurement and output over the coming months. Their immediate significance is the EU’s decision to extend restrictions beyond the most visible weapons producers into the broader industrial networks sustaining Russia’s war.
The EU adopted its largest-ever round of sanctions listings on 12 October, targeting the suppliers behind Russia’s war industry, the Council of the EU announced. The bloc acted as Russia keeps killing Ukrainian civilians every day, while US President Donald Trump eases sanctions on Russian diesel.
Russia’s planned winter campaign against Ukraine’s infrastructure depends on arms factories fed by a web of component suppliers and on oil revenue that still flows despite Ukraine’s refinery strikes, so every supplier cut off from that web raises the cost of waging it. As Washington eases off, Europe’s own pressure has a gap: its ports still take record volumes of Russian Arctic gas, and a full ban on long-term contracts starts only in 2027.
More than half of the new listings hit the supply chain for ballistic missiles that Russia “uses to kill Ukrainian civilians every day,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in the statement. Russian attacks killed more than 150 people in the past week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 11 October.
The list names 826 Russian companies, mid-level firms the Council calls the “core” of Russia’s arms industry, with at least €20 billion in yearly turnover, and 743 people who run them. They make parts for missiles, drones, and military aircraft, from semiconductors and radars to explosives and navigation systems. Their assets are frozen, EU firms may not finance them, and the executives may not enter the EU.
Foreign ministers ratified a deal EU envoys reached on 7 October. Ukraine’s sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk said 60% of the listings came from Ukrainian proposals.
EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg vowed to keep the sanctions despite Trump’s diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Euronews reported. Kallas addressed Washington directly as she arrived.
“The US is our biggest ally, but our message is clear: if we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is (by) putting more pressure on Russia,” Kallas said.
Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee called the deal “concerning,” and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said it was “not the European way.” Kallas warned that an energy truce covering only refineries would favor Russia, since Ukraine has one refinery and Russia “plenty.”
Trump announced the diesel deal on 9 October, and the US Treasury waived sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027. Zelenskyy said the EU would provide about €3 billion more in military aid this week.
Trump expects Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries under his proposed energy ceasefire, a White House official told Axios. Zelenskyy said Kyiv would halt such strikes if Moscow did the same. On 10 October, Trump told reporters it was time for Ukraine to get a new president. Germany’s foreign minister, Britain’s defense secretary, and a senior lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party backed Zelenskyy, while the Kremlin sided with Trump.
Zelenskyy offered to hold elections after a 60-day ceasefire, and Kallas said elections are impossible while the war goes on. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia exploits Ukraine’s legal ban on wartime elections to drag out the war.
Europe will not loosen its pressure on Russia after the US-Russia diesel deal, EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas says. She has announced that EU foreign ministers will approve the bloc’s largest set of sanctions against Russia’s war machine since the full-scale invasion on 12 October.
Washington has just eased the pressure on Russia, letting Russian diesel back onto world markets and handing Moscow more money to wage war. This comes as Russian strikes have killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days, 22 of them on Russian President Vladimir Putin's birthday on 7 October.
Moreover, Russia has stepped up its hybrid attacks against Europe, both EU Member States and NATO Allies. It is now the time to tighten sanctions, not loosen them, Kallas says.
“Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war. This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t,” she claims.
On 9 October, Trump claimed he had agreed with Putin to put more than 300,000 tons of Russian diesel on world markets immediately.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the deal a weak decision by strong partners, arguing that Russia turns oil-product revenue into weapons against Ukraine's civilians, according to the BBC.
On 7 October, EU ambassadors approved the 22nd package of sanctions, with about 1,700 listings, Ukrainian President’s Commissioner for Sanctions Policy Vladyslav Vlasiuk notes. It is expected to be formally approved on 12 October.
This package contains the largest number of sanctions targeting Russia’s defence industry. Of these, 60% were drawn from Ukrainian decrees and proposals. The package includes measures targeting machine tools, Lancet drones, ballistic weapons, and related technologies.
“The core of the package is Russia’s missile programme and electronic components: electronics, capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors. It also covers electronic warfare, shipbuilding, and explosives,” Vlasiuk says.
It took just a few weeks from Ukraine's decision to the European one.
"But we are already working on further measures, including sectoral sanctions targeting energy, the defense industry, finance, and trade,” he stated.
Until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Czech Vanadium was among the European companies which clearly had Russian owners.
Since 2007, the company has been controlled through the Evraz group by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, who is close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The ferrovanadium producer was part of a chain through which vanadium ore mined in Russia reached Europe before being sent on to Abramovich’s factories in the US. Ferrovanadium is an alloy added to steel to help improve its properties. And Czech Republic accounts for six percent of global production.
But sanctions following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced the oligarch to sell up.
Evraz, the holding company in which Abramovich is the largest shareholder, supplied the Russian army, according to media reports. But Evraz denied this.
In 2024, the Abu Dhabi-based company Metco (now ‘Metco Holding’) became the sole shareholder in the Czech factory, but it is not clear who controls it.
Czech authorities and police suspect the transfer of the vanadium factory to a new parent company in the UAE may conceal the true owner. They are seeking to establish who is really behind the opaque company in the Persian Gulf, and whether it is still Roman Abramovich.
According to Deník N sources familiar with the investigation, specialists from Czech police bodies for organised crime (NCOZ) and the financial intelligence unit (FAÚ) are involved.
“Yes, we are investigating who is behind the company. There are many leads and the suspicion is clear that the company may still be backed by its former owners from Russia,” a source close to the investigation confirmed.
NCOZ spokesperson Jaroslav Ibehej declined to comment in more detail on the search for Czech Vanadium’s beneficial owner. “As a rule, we neither confirm nor deny what we are working on,” he said.
According to documents in the Czech judicial database, the company is formally controlled by one owner — a Dubai-based lawyer of Indian origin who provides nominee services for beneficial owners. The lawyer has been linked to money-laundering investigations in Ukraine and Moldova.
The officially declared owner of Czech Vanadium is Nikhil Skariah Kolekunnel. According to the ADGM free zone business register in the UAE, he is both the sole shareholder and director of Metco Holding.
However, the Gulf state’s database does not disclose so-called beneficiaries, who are entitled to the company’s profits and may also secretly control it.
Although the Czech judicial register lists Skariah as Czech Vanadium’s beneficial owner, this does not necessarily indicate the person exercising control in the background. For example, trustees of trust funds are also listed in the registers as beneficial owners.
The nature of Skariah Kolekunnel’s business suggests that he performs the specific role of an administrator, a so-called fiduciary — someone who accepts an ownership mandate and effectively manages another person’s assets.
He is a lawyer originally from India who founded two law firms in the UAE years ago. His companies represent large corporations and businesspeople who do not wish to publicly acknowledge ownership of a business.
“South Bridge Legal is an advisory firm for comprehensive business establishment in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the UAE. Our highly experienced team has been active in the sector for more than 10 years, providing services tailored to the unique needs of every ambitious entrepreneur setting up companies in Dubai,” the company wrote on its website.
“We have all activities, which is tax management, tax consulting, accounting, corporate services, offshore company formation, free zone company formation…everything,” Skariah said in a recently published video on YouTube.
Metco Holding’s address in Abu Dhabi suggests it may be a shell company. And it is headquartered from a WeWork.
‘Skariah’, the name of the Indian administrator, had already emerged eight years ago in connection with the concealment of ownership structures during an investigation into the privatisation of Moldova’s national airline. At the time, Skariah appeared as the owner of the opaque company Gold Craft FZE, established in Dubai in 2015.
“On Monday 1 October 2018, one day before the privatisation agreement for Air Moldova was signed, a plane from Istanbul landed at Chișinău International Airport. One of the passengers, a 39-year-old man, was carrying nearly €2.6m in cash in his luggage. He declared the money to customs officers, which, according to the Office for the Prevention and Fight against Money Laundering, he had borrowed four days earlier from Gold Craft FZE in the United Arab Emirates,” the investigative outlet RISE Moldova reported.
It finds that Andrei Ianovici brought cash from Dubai, equivalent to tens of millions of Czech crowns. Later that day, he deposited the money in a bank, and it ended up in the accounts of Civil Aviation Group SRL. That company privatised Air Moldova, and Ianovici was one of its partners.
The true origin of the money was never established, leading local investigators to suspect that the money had not been earned legally. No charges were brought, however.
According to court records, Skariah was also involved in disputes in Ukraine, where Gold Craft FZE claimed ownership of an Ilyushin aircraft which the company allegedly purchased in 2017.
However, the UAE-based lawyer was not the only individual to have emerged as an administrator of Czech Vanadium. Another is Sergei Gushchin.
A man of this name was formerly a prominent Russian businessman in rail freight transport and, although he withdrew from Russia three years ago, he appears on Ukrainian sanctions lists for supporting the Russian army.
Gushchin became a senior manager at PJSC TransContainer, a Russian rail freight carrier, after Evraz sold its stake. In the past, a quarter of the company was owned by the holding company of Abramovich.
Meanwhile another of Gushchin’s companies, Rail Service, formed a joint venture with Evraz in 2019 focused on the production of railway wheels.
According to a UAE register, Gushchin was a director and shareholder of Metco, which became Czech Vanadium’s parent company from 2022-23.
US credit-rating agency Moody’s shared data with Deník N that listed Gushchin as a recent beneficiary of Metco Holding and as the company’s director.
Czech Vanadium’s revenues regularly exceed €81m, and in 2024 the company reported profits of more than €8m. This summer, the company sent over €0.6m of that sum to the Dubai company, the remaining funds staying in its retained earnings account.
Last year, the company recorded a modest €0.2m loss. Its accounts retained more than €12m in undistributed profits in total.
Czech Vanadium’s business remains closely tied to Russia. Last year alone, vanadium oxides or hydroxides worth nearly €82m were imported into the Czech Republic from the Russian Federation. Russia is effectively the sole supplier of the raw materials needed to produce ferrovanadium. According to the statistical office database, exports mainly go to the United States, as well as Germany and Taiwan.
Czech Vanadium did not reply to requests for comment or an explanation of its ownership structure.
It also did not answer the question of how a Dubai lawyer had bought the Czech company, which, according to some estimates, is worth more than €40m.
Company representatives have not responded to questions about its owners since 2024, when the company left the Evraz group structure.
Jiří Skuhrovec, an analyst at Datlab, specialises in the global vetting of business partners. He says Abramovich uses a similar model for concealing ownership in the United States.
Sanctions also forced the Russian oligarch, who became better known through his former ownership of the British football club Chelsea, to withdraw from US companies. But Skuhrovec concluded that they were probably still controlled by people linked to Abramovich just like the factory in Czech Republic.
“We mapped the entire chain, from the Russian ore supplier through the Czech smelter to the final recipient: the US company Strategic Alloys LLC. Until recently, all three companies officially belonged to Abramovich, and all three are now controlled by people with links to his Evraz group. Abramovich may therefore still secretly control the entire supply chain for this strategic raw material. This would be a textbook case of sanctions circumvention, as well as an obvious security risk,” Skuhrovec said.
Findings led Datlab and Transparency International to submit a complaint to police. “We believe that the 16m Czech crowns (around €655,000) in distributed profit may have gone to Abramovich, who is on a sanctions list. That would constitute a criminal offence,” the analyst explained.
Ukraine is preparing a new sanctions initiative targeting more than 20 Russian businessmen and intends to press for Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman to be placed back under restrictions, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Thursday.
Sybiha, speaking to journalists in Kyiv on 1 October, said the Ukrainian government regarded the European Union’s decision to remove the two men from its sanctions list as unacceptable and had tried to prevent it through both public and diplomatic channels.
“Our response will be asymmetric. You removed two oligarchs, and we will add another twenty,” Sybiha said.
He said Kyiv had prepared a list containing more than 20 Russian businessmen for possible sanctions and was also working to restore restrictions against Usmanov and Fridman.
The minister did not specify which EU legal mechanism Kyiv expects to use. Ukraine cannot itself add individuals to the bloc’s restrictive-measures list, meaning any renewed designation would require action by EU member states.
The EU formally removed Usmanov and Fridman from its sanctions list on 22 September. Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2160 deleted the entries for Usmanov, Fridman and Russian businessman Andrey Falaleev, as well as Redbird Corporate Services Ltd.
At the same time, EU governments extended the remaining individual sanctions for another 36 months, until 22 September 2029. The regime covers more than 3,000 individuals and entities and provides for asset freezes, travel restrictions and a prohibition on EU citizens and companies making funds or economic resources available to those listed.
The agreement marked a significant change to the previous system under which individual sanctions were renewed every six months.
The fate of Usmanov and Fridman had become one of the principal points of dispute during negotiations. EU Today reported before the decision that Latvia opposed a compromise involving their removal while supporting a longer renewal period for the wider sanctions regime.
The eventual agreement nevertheless resulted in both men being removed. EU Today reported on 22 September that the Council had approved the three-year extension alongside their delisting.
Kyiv is now seeking to compensate for that decision through national sanctions regimes while pursuing their possible return to the EU list.
Sybiha said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had approved the Ukrainian approach and that Kyiv was working with partner governments to ensure that restrictions against Usmanov and Fridman remained in force outside the EU framework.
According to the foreign minister, Canada has indicated that it intends to retain its restrictions. Sybiha also pointed to Britain, Japan and Australia as jurisdictions where sanctions remain in place and said Ukraine would seek similar measures elsewhere.
Britain continues to maintain a separate national Russia sanctions regime. The UK government’s current Russia sanctions framework records designations, amendments and removals independently of decisions made by the European Union.
Several EU member states have meanwhile taken or begun preparing national measures following the September decision.
Estonia moved immediately after the EU agreement. Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna signed national sanctions against Usmanov and Fridman on 23 September, saying Tallinn had opposed their removal from the EU list.
Lithuania has also begun using national legislation. Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys asked for both businessmen to be placed on Lithuania’s national entry-ban list for five years. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said it was also preparing legal measures that would allow the freezing of their funds and economic resources.
The dispute has exposed one of the structural features of EU sanctions policy: decisions on restrictive measures require agreement among member states, allowing individual listings to become part of wider negotiations over the continuation of an entire sanctions regime.
Moving from six-month to three-year renewals reduces the frequency with which the broader Russia sanctions list has to return to the negotiating table.
It does not, however, prevent individual names from being added again during that period. Kyiv’s new initiative is therefore likely to focus both on persuading individual governments to introduce national restrictions and on building sufficient support inside the EU for Usmanov and Fridman to be designated again.
As European coastal states detain more vessels sailing under false flags and pressure mounts on flag-of-convenience registries to remove sanctioned tonnage, Russia itself is increasingly becoming the destination of last resort for the oil trade’s shadow fleet.
A new analysis published on Friday (25 September) by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that 107 vessels joined Russia’s flag registry between January 2025 and June 2026, representing a 36 percent increase. The growth peaked in December 2025, when 25 vessels were added in a single month. Of the 107 vessels, 93 (87 percent) were already under sanctions, while 56 percent had previously operated under a false flag.
The development reflects an evolving enforcement dynamic. Sanctions alone have not stopped many shadow-fleet vessels from operating. Instead, detentions and pressure on the registries that provide the vessels with flags have forced operators to repeatedly change their arrangements.
As open registries come under increasing diplomatic pressure to remove sanctioned Russian-linked vessels, ships are moving between flags, adopting fraudulent ones or, increasingly, registering directly with Russia.
“The fleet keeps adapting, so enforcement is often responding to its latest move,” research fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute, Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin told EUobserver, describing the development as a growing concern for European countries seeking to restrict Russia’s oil revenues.
The shift is already visible among major open registries.
Barbados and Palau have cleared their registries of sanctioned vessels, while Panama has reduced its number of sanctioned vessels by almost two-thirds from a peak in May 2025. The world’s largest ship registries have also established the Registry Information Sharing Compact (RISC), a shared database intended to combat flag-hopping and other forms of sanctions circumvention.
But removing vessels from one registry does not make them disappear. Instead, they can migrate to registries with weaker oversight or greater opacity.
By June 2026, 46 unique vessels previously registered under Comoros or Gambia had joined Russia’s registry. Others have moved to Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, while some continue to operate without a recognised flag.
The result is a cycle in which vessels move from one jurisdiction to another as enforcement pressure changes.
“Most of the fleet is under sanctions but sanctions themselves do not stop them from sailing,” said Saiz Erausquin.
“Russia’s ‘shadow’ fleet is moving in waves from one open flag registry to the next,” said Luke Wickenden, the report’s main author and an energy analyst at CREA. “As flag registries come under pressure to expel sanctioned Russian ‘shadow’ vessels, the vessels hop between flags, sometimes sailing under fraudulent flags that leave them vulnerable to detention, before settling under the Russian registry as a final safe haven.”
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
Login