By Oyintari Ben
The governments of the European Union came to an agreement on Wednesday on yet another set of penalties against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, primarily to prevent third parties and businesses from getting under the current EU regulations.
“The EU Ambassadors reached a consensus today on the 11th round of sanctions against Russia. The package includes steps to combat individual listings and circumvention of penalties, according to a tweet from the Swedish EU presidency.
The package prohibits the transit through Russia of products and technologies that could be utilised by the Russian military or benefit the country’s defence and security sector.
Additionally, it widens the list of restricted products that could benefit Russia’s military and defence sector. It enables limits to be placed on the sale of sensitive dual-use commodities and technology to nations that might sell them to Russia.
The package extends the suspension of five state-owned Russian media outlets’ broadcasting licences in the European Union.
The package forbids access to EU ports for ships that engage in ship-to-ship transfers, if there is reasonable suspicion that the cargo loaded was of Russian origin in order to stop the practice of ships loading Russian crude oil or petroleum products at sea in order to get around the EU ban on the import of Russian crude and petroleum products.
The package adds 71 additional individuals and 33 further businesses, whose assets are kept frozen in the EU due to their role in illegally deporting Ukrainian children to Russia, among other things.
