Who in EU saved two Russian oligarchs from sanctions, why and what consequences could this have?

On Tuesday, after lengthy debates, EU countries agreed to preserve one of the main sanctions regimes against Russia and even made the sanctions more stable by extending them for 36 months.

However, this decision came at a high price: Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman were delisted.

The main lobbyist for easing the sanctions was a European heavyweight – France.

Read more why President Emmanuel Macron agreed to this, what will France gain from it and how did Latvia try to oppose the rescue of the Russian oligarchs in the article by Tetiana Vysotska, a European Pravda correspondent in Brussels: Sanctions and hostage trading. How the EU barely maintained pressure on Putin and who supported Ukraine. 

The EU sanctions regime in response to "actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine" was established back in March 2014 as a swift punishment for those involved in the occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea.

The sanctions list was significantly expanded and restructured in 2022.

Overall, these restrictions cover more than 3,000 individuals and legal entities.

The wealthiest sanctioned individuals make the greatest efforts to have themselves removed from the list because of funds and other assets frozen within the EU.

The battle to have oligarch Alisher Usmanov removed from the sanctions list has been going on for a long time. In spring 2026, the campaign to save him reached the highest political level.

As European Pravda reported, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote a letter to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico asking him to support Usmanov’s removal from the list. In the letter, Erdoğan described Usmanov as an "Uzbek philanthropist" and referred to the Russian oligarch’s charitable activities in Central Asia and the Turkic world.

Slovakia circulated the letter among other EU capitals, but without success. Then, on 11 September, during discussions on the sanctions regime in Brussels, a French diplomat suddenly announced that Paris supported the Slovak initiative to remove Usmanov from the sanctions list.

According to sources, France secured the lifting of sanctions on Usmanov in exchange for the release of French citizen Martin Ryan.

The reason for removing Fridman from the sanctions list is extremely clear: for a long time, he has been demanding at least $16 billion in compensation from Luxembourg through the courts for his frozen assets. The legal disputes are still ongoing, causing concern among Luxembourg officials.

The mechanism for lifting the sanctions will create a dangerous precedent: personal sanctions imposed because of aggression against Ukraine could become a form of "currency" in disputes and negotiations that have nothing directly to do with Ukraine, while "hostage trading" could become a tool for easing sanctions pressure.

Latvia tried to oppose the rescue of the two Russian oligarchs, but its public protest did not last long. To save face, Latvia abstained from the vote on removing Usmanov and Fridman. Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs explained this as a "choice between bad and much worse". If Latvia had vetoed the decision, all 3,000 sanctioned individuals – from Putin to Abramovich – would have ended up outside the sanctions regime.

Riga also announced plans to impose national sanctions on both oligarchs to prevent their assets in Latvia from being unfrozen.

Against this background, another agreement is also revealing.

The Latvian prime minister said that, following his contacts with President Emmanuel Macron, France had agreed to begin negotiations on Latvia’s participation in the French nuclear deterrence initiative.

So, the good news is that it will now become almost impossible to remove someone from the sanctions list under pressure from one or more countries, at least for the next three years.

On the other hand, a precedent has been created in which sanctions against top-listed individuals were lifted as a result of political bargaining.

Could this precedent also undermine the sectoral sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy?