The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has filed a lawsuit with the High Anti-Corruption Court to impose sanctions on a Russian citizen, businessman, designer, and Putin's propagandist Artem Lebedev

‘On 30 June 2023, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court to impose a sanction under paragraph 1-1 of part one of Article 4 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Sanctions’ on Artem Lebedev, a citizen of the Russian Federation, born on 13 February 1975, a Russian public figure who spreads pro-Russian propaganda in the media,’ the Ministry of Justice website reports.

This is the first time that such a sanction has been applied to a blogger for propaganda on social media.

As a reminder, on 21 January 2022, the National Security and Defence Council's decision to impose sanctions on a number of Russian citizens, including Artem Lebedev, came into force.

The sanctions include the freezing of assets, prevention of the withdrawal of capital from Ukraine, and other sanctions that comply with the principles of their application established by the Law (suspension of financial transactions).

At the time of the imposition of these sanctions, Lebedev owned an apartment in Kyiv and a studio that continued to operate.

In 2017, Lebedev was banned from entering Ukraine for five years after illegally visiting the Russian-occupied territories of Donbas and Crimea. On his social media pages, he criticized the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, supported Russia's occupation of Crimea, and called Ukraine a ‘region of Russia’.

After the full-scale invasion, Putin's propagandists illegally visited the occupied territories, including the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The SBU opened a criminal investigation and served the propagandist with a notice of suspicion.

It is worth noting that this is the only effective mechanism in the world to recover the assets of war collaborators. This is already the 24th lawsuit to apply such a sanction. To ensure that there are more such lawsuits and that war collaborators do not continue to own wealth in Ukraine, it is necessary to strengthen the institutional capacity of the Ministry of Justice.

It is also important to introduce criminal liability for circumventing sanctions, which will increase control over compliance with sanctions restrictions and confiscate assets that are attempted to evade them.