In the fifth month of the war, more than three thousand Russian officials responsible for the aggression, as well as propagandists, military, security forces and judges, may be included in the Ukrainian sanctions lists.
Source: UKRAYINSKA PRAVDA
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has registered draft Resolution No. 7573, which proposes that the NSDC impose personal sanctions on Russians who systematically and actively support the war against Ukraine, pose real and/or potential threats to the national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Ukraine's active work in implementing the sanctions policy is an important signal to our international partners.
It is hard to disagree that foreign countries will have fewer grounds to impose sanctions on those Russians who are not on Ukraine's sanctions lists. This issue is exacerbated by the introduction by Ukraine of a mechanism for confiscating the assets of sanctioned persons and the search for ways to implement such instruments by other countries. Therefore, this proposal by the Verkhovna Rada and the subsequent imposition of sanctions by the National Security and Defence Council are a positive signal.
Who will be subject to sanctions?
The Parliament (through MPs from the Dovira group) proposed to the NSDC the largest list of sanctioned persons in the history of restrictive measures, a tool that has been actively used in Ukraine since 2014.
The appendix to the resolution is more than 500 pages long and contains information on 3,775 Russians against whom sanctions are proposed. All of them are divided into 5 main groups.
The first group includes the so-called organisers of the war in Ukraine, namely members of the Russian Security Council and officials of the Ministry of Defence. Among them are, in particular, ‘reserve’ President Medvedev, Matvienko, a native of Khmelnytsky region, and other officials directly responsible for waging war against Ukraine. In total, there are 110 such individuals.
The second group of sanctioned Russians includes individuals who provide political support for Russian military operations in Ukraine. There are 1536 of them. These are Duma deputies, senators, top local and regional officials, as well as representatives of Putin's party and his proxies in the 2018 presidential election.
The third group includes those who contribute to the economic and financial support of Russia's military operations in Ukraine, namely top executive officials, state bankers, heads of state funds and state-owned companies, including Gazprom, Rosneft, Aeroflot, Russian Railways, etc.
This also includes Russians involved in the regime's business schemes, as well as family members of officials living abroad. For example, 67-year-old pensioner Zinaida Arevshatyan, who receives resources from the accounts of companies controlled by Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan; Putin's daughters Maria Vorontsova and Ekaterina Tikhonova; Alina Kabayeva's mother and grandmother and owners of luxury real estate and significant business assets - Lyubov Kabayeva and Anna Zatsepilina.
It is noteworthy that this group includes Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has assets in Ukraine and is already subject to sanctions imposed for 3 years by the NSDC decision of 18.06.2021.
In total, this group includes 884 Russians.
The fourth group includes Russian propagandists and war ideologues, as well as public figures who supported the war against Ukraine, including bloggers, scientists and cultural figures, athletes, etc. Among them are the ‘cisterns’ Skabeyeva, Solovyov and Simonyan, ‘diplomat’ Zakharova, singers Baskov and Gazmanov, TV presenter of Dom 2 Borodina and cultural figures who signed an open letter to ‘support the decision of the Russian president to launch a military operation to denazify Ukraine and protect the Donbas republics’. The total number of such people was 661.
The sanctions list closes with Russian officials involved in the suppression of anti-war movements within Russia. These include investigators, prosecutors, judges and special forces, whose total number on the list reaches 584.
It is worth noting that this list has certain overlaps with the well-known list of corrupt officials and war mongers prepared by the team of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the so-called ‘list of 6000’.
What sanctions will be imposed?
The Verkhovna Rada proposes to impose 16 types of restrictive measures on the designated Russians for an indefinite period of time, ranging from blocking and confiscation of assets to visa cancellations and deprivation of state awards.
Will assets be confiscated?
Unfortunately, no matter how much we would like to, assets cannot be confiscated as proposed by the Verkhovna Rada, despite the fact that this type of sanction is provided for in the Resolution.
The fact is that the recently adopted law defines a different mechanism for confiscating assets of sanctioned persons.
Firstly, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine can only submit proposals to the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDCU) for the imposition, cancellation and amendment of sanctions. Therefore, even if the Parliament votes for this document, it does not guarantee that sanctions will be imposed.
Secondly, even if the NSDC supports them with its decision and the President enforces them with his decree, the maximum that can happen is the blocking of assets.
And only the Ministry of Justice has the right to file a lawsuit with the High Anti-Corruption Court to confiscate assets belonging to sanctioned persons. Therefore, the parliamentary decision can only become a prerequisite for their confiscation in court. We hope that this will happen, because in the 2 months since the law came into force, the Ministry of Justice has not filed a single confiscation claim and this mechanism is not actually working.
It is also worth noting that confiscation can only be applied to persons who have been sanctioned by the National Security and Defence Council by decisions of the National Security and Defence Council adopted after the Law came into force, i.e. after 24 May 2022. Therefore, the confiscation of assets of the same oligarch Deripaska under this mechanism may become problematic, as his assets have been blocked since 18 June 2021. And the law does not provide for the way of ‘re-imposing’ sanctions in order to extend the law and further confiscate assets, which is a legislative shortcoming that should be corrected.
Why not take the easy way out and confiscate such assets by a decision of the National Security and Defence Council or the Parliament? The fact is that confiscation, which we all want and which should be a source of funding for Ukraine's recovery, is a much greater interference with human rights than any other sanction. Therefore, failure to comply with certain rules may undermine all our efforts and even lead to the appeal and compensation of all confiscated assets.
In general, an active sanctions policy and confiscation of assets of the aggressor and its henchmen can and should be used primarily by Ukraine itself. After all, it is difficult to demand that our international partners impose sanctions and laws on the confiscation of Russian assets without confiscating a single asset of a Russian top official or oligarch supporting the Putin regime.