EU Sanctions Policy toward Russia after February 2022: Major Transformation Trends
By Ivan Timofeev, associate professor, MGIMO University,
and Polina Chupriyanova, program coordinator, RIAC.
Keywords: enforcement, sanctions, secondary sanctions, weaponized interdependence, EU, Russia
Abstract
The EU sanctions policy against Russia has been under transition since February 2022. The dramatic increase of Russian persons and sectors of economy under sanctions indicates quantitative changes of the EU's approach. On the other hand, these transformations are of qualitative nature. Qualitative changes include the revision of the EU's position on the use of secondary restrictions, as well as visible shifts in sanctions’ enforcement. At the same time, these transformations are poorly reflected in the academic literature. The purpose of the article is to fill in these gaps, as well as to address the research questions on the key changes in the EU's approach to implementing sanctions policy against Russia after February 2022 and the dynamics and features of these changes. RIAC databases on sanctions and analysis of the EU normative documents on the policy of sanctions are the main tools of empirical observations.