The President of Ukraine’s representative on sanctions policy, Vladislav Vlasyuk, said that the EU’s 18th sanctions package was disappointing because it didn’t include restrictions on Russian sea terminals and only targeted a small number of Russian tankers.
He made this statement on television, according to a Ukrinform correspondent.
“It’s a good step. Could it have been better? Yes, but as with the 17th sanctions package, the final version is significantly better than what we saw a few weeks ago. It’s nice to see our contribution here. In particular, quite a few “targets” related to the Russian military-industrial complex are linked to our recommendations and evidence of sanctions circumvention. So, we will see about two hundred items related to the Russian military-industrial complex in this package,” Vlasyuk emphasized.
He noted that international partners are focusing on traditional issues such as the need for sanctions against the Russian energy sector, military-industrial complex, and financial sector. At the same time, according to Vlasyuk, the international sanctions group has reacted cautiously to the need to block the Russian shadow fleet.
“My assessment of the tankers is more restrained. 77 tankers is not bad, but, first, it is not a large number, given the size of the shadow fleet. And secondly, there has been a discussion for several months that sanctions on tankers alone are not enough, since approximately half of the tankers under sanctions continue to work for Russia anyway. Other steps of similar quality were discussed. In particular, sanctions against the Russian Federation’s marine terminals. And we did not see that either. This is a bit of a letdown in this package,” Vlasyuk said.
As reported by Ukrinform, the next, 18th package of EU sanctions will target key sectors of the Russian economy—energy, banking, and critical exports—and additional measures are planned to combat the circumvention of EU restrictive measures.
