The ninth round of sanctions, announced by president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on December 7, 2022, follows implementation of the full European Union import ban on Russian seaborne oil and the agreement by the G7 and Australia to impose a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian oil. The new sanctions are designed to increase pressure to halt Russia’s war against Ukraine by curtailing Russia’s ability to fund the war.
The proposed sanctions package has four elements:
- the addition of almost 200 individuals and entities to the current sanctions list;
- a full transaction ban on the Russian Regional Development Bank and sanctions against two additional Russian banks;
- new export control on dual-use goods, including chemicals, nerve agents and some electronics, and;
- a ban on direct exports of drone engines to Russia or to third countries that could supply drones to Russia.
Supplementing these measures, the European Commission plans to take four additional media channels off the air to further impede the dissemination of Russian propaganda, and to ban new mining investments in Russia as well as to intensify measures targeting the Russian energy and mining sectors.
For information about earlier rounds of sanctions against Russia, please see here (8th round of EU sanctions) here (5th round of EU sanctions), here (US sanctions), here (harmonization of EU member states’ penal codes for sanctions violations), here (parallel US, EU and UK sanctions), and here (decision to make sanctions violations crimes under the TFEU).