The extraordinary European summit held this Thursday in Brussels has launched an unprecedented battery of sanctions against Russia as punishment for an invasion of Ukraine that, in the opinion of European leaders, marks a before and after in the relationship with Moscow and in history. of the Old Continent. The agreed reprisals aim to isolate the Russian economy from the rest of the world and represent a brutal blow to the main financial entities of the aggressor country and to the industrial and military network that supports the Vladimir Putin regime. Almost no strategic sector will be spared from the impact in Russia. Banks, defense and aerospace companies, infrastructure builders, large transport and logistics companies or airlines will lose or see limited access to European financing markets and will be prohibited from acquiring essential technology and components for their modernization.
Among the measures contemplated is that Russian public companies will not be able to go public in Europe and large tycoons will not be able to open accounts in European banks, according to a draft of the sanctions document to which EL PAÍS has had access. The blacklist that prevents travel to the EU and condemns the freezing of assets in community territory will also be extended to include the oligarchs closest to Putin, who until now had been spared any retaliation for not having a direct involvement in the repeated aggression by the Russian army against some of its neighbors.
The EU punishment, agreed with countries such as the US, UK, Canada and Norway, seeks to seriously damage the Russian economy. But the ultimate goal is to subject Putin to a clamp of discontent and protest by a population that will suffer the most painful consequences and an oligarchy that will see its potential for enrichment drastically reduced at the expense of the regime. The lack of freedoms allows Putin to suppress public opinion. But Brussels is confident that long-term suffering and the possible revolt of a frustrated elite will eventually erode a president who has controlled the country for 22 years and has amended the constitution to entrench himself in the Kremlin until at least 2036.
“These measures include extensive financial sanctions and strict export controls that will have a profound impact on the economy, the financial system and access to cutting-edge technology,” the draft states. The objective, the text continues, is to impose “serious costs on the main Russian financial institutions” that “will further isolate Russia from the world financial system.”
The leaders have met at eight in the afternoon this Thursday in Brussels and have prolonged the discussion until early Friday morning, in a meeting without telephones and behind closed doors. The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, has participated briefly by videoconference, in an emotional way and dressed in a khaki shirt, to demand help from the community bloc, as the Russian troops advanced in his country and his feeling of isolation grew. The Ukrainian president was later disappointed. “They have left us alone to defend our state,” Zelensky said in a video posted on the presidential account, according to the AFP agency. “Who is willing to fight with us? I do not see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine the guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid ”, he lamented.
Several European leaders have also expressed during the meeting the need to go even further with the sanctions, demanding dramatic measures such as removing Russia from the Swift system of financial transactions, something that has finally been ruled out, at least for now, with countries like Germany. against, according to sources familiar with the negotiation. “We will see how the situation develops. [en Ucrania], but we are willing to go further”, assured a community source, present at the leaders’ negotiations, who underlined that both the first and the second package of sanctions have been approved in 24 hours. “And we’re already thinking about the third.” Among the discussions to go further, it is also discussed to further encircle the circle of oligarchs close to Putin. And even Putin himself. The idea of the Twenty-seven is to keep aces up their sleeves because they are treading unknown territory, with scenarios barely imaginable a few days ago, and whose outcome is dark and unpredictable.
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“It is a first response”, assured the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in an appearance at the end of the summit, at 2:30 in the morning, together with the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the president of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen. Heartbroken, Macron has explained his latest attempt to stop Putin through an unsuccessful phone call this Thursday. The exchange, at the request of Zelenski, has been “frank, direct and quick” to ask him to stop the fighting as soon as possible. “It has not produced effects, as you can see, for the moment”, he said with a serious gesture. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
The battery finally adopted attacks two of the main banks in the country (Alfa Bank and Bank Otkritie), according to the aforementioned draft, a blow that adds to the sanction already imposed in the first blow this week to three other institutions —Bank Rossiya , Promsvyazbank and VEB—, and also prohibits new IPOs of Russian state companies on EU markets. It also cuts off the financial flow with the community bloc of state companies – such as Almaz-Antey, Kamaz, Rostec or Russian Railways – present in sectors linked to military capacity, such as aerospace, naval, automotive and weapons.
The financial scourge will affect “70% of the Russian banking market,” Von der Leyen assured at the appearance. The package, he added, “will have maximum impact on the Russian economy and the political elite.”
The planned sanctions also tangentially surround the Russian oligarchy for the first time, by prohibiting citizens or legal entities of this country from opening new bank deposits of more than 100,000 euros in the EU, “for which it clearly affects the Russian elite” , asserts the draft, a measure, it adds, coordinated with Switzerland. And a ban on exports from the EU to Russia in the energy sector is also imposed, preventing trade in European equipment and technology necessary for the modernization of Russian refineries. Elements that are “unique and cannot be replaced”, according to Von der Leyen, which is why it will end up affecting a sector that contributes 24,000 million euros to Russia in the medium term. The same measure is taken in the air and aerospace sector, restricting the export of aircraft and key parts and technology.
With the new package, which must still be formally adopted, something that is scheduled for this Friday, the EU also wants to restrict the export of military and civil dual-use products and other advanced technology products with dozens of end users in Russia linked to the military sector, thus influencing sectors that can help, directly or indirectly, to improve Russia’s military and technological capacity. This measure would apply, according to the draft, “to all end users of items from the following sectors: electronics, computing, telecommunications and sensors and lasers, marine applications.”
The sanctions also hit new groups of individuals, who are prohibited from traveling to the EU and whose assets in the community bloc are frozen, including Belarusian citizens from the military and the Ministry of Defense who have “facilitated the invasion of Ukraine,” according to the draft. And these measures are extended to all members of the Duma (the Russian parliament), beyond the 351 parliamentarians who had been sanctioned with the first tranche of sanctions, and to members of the Russian National Security Council.
The Twenty-seven still reserve the possibility of toughening the coup, but they are convinced that they can destabilize Putin with this second battery of sanctions, after the one approved on Wednesday after the recognition of the independence of the separatist provinces of Donbas by Moscow. . But some EU countries believe that the shock is not enough and that the Russian president has enough financial resources to stay in power. Added to this are his political levers that have imposed a terror regime around him that Putin has taken care to stage: the edited video of the last meeting of the Russian Security Council before the attack showed some senior officials totally subject to authority of the president. And Putin did not even shy away from broadcasting the humiliation in public to the head of his espionage services abroad, stuttering and frightened before the interrogation of a president who doubted his alignment with the official position of the Kremlin.
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