(Bloomberg) — The European Union is sanctioning 23 high-ranking individuals including banking executives, military chiefs, media figures and a top Kremlin official in retaliation for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of separatist territories in Ukraine.
The list of sanctions, which Bloomberg has seen, was adopted by EU member states on Wednesday.
The measures are expected to be published and come into force shortly, according to officials familiar with the process.
The bloc included state television presenter Vladimir Soloviev, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova and the head of Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, Margarita Simonyan, on its list, according to the officials.
The EU also sanctioned Denis Bortnikov, deputy president of state-owned VTB Bank PJSC, a day after the U.S. penalized him.
His father is Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov, a key figure in Putin’s inner circle, who was first sanctioned by the U.S.
in March last year and redesignated by the Treasury on Tuesday.
VTB’s Chief Executive Officer Andrey Kostin and Igor Shuvalov, who heads state-run development bank VEB.RF, were sanctioned by Brussels as well, along with Yevgeny Prigozhin, a tycoon known as “Putin’s chef” for his Kremlin catering contracts who is under U.S.
sanctions for alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. Members of Prigozhin’s family were also sanctioned, the officials said.
The West had warned Putin of swift and severe economic measures if he invaded Ukraine, but the limited actions taken so far by the EU, the U.S.
and the U.K. have fallen well short of that benchmark. Markets have largely shrugged off what the U.S. and its allies called a “first tranche” of penalties even as governments have indicated that they’re ready to impose tougher measures if Putin escalates the crisis further.
While the EU targeted some people with asset freezes and travel bans who haven’t previously been hit, it refrained from penalizing prominent Russian billionaires though the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Tuesday he’d be willing to target “oligarchs” in future proposals for sanctions.
The measures likely have only symbolic weight for Russian security officials, who are banned by law from holding foreign assets and usually only travel abroad on state business using diplomatic passports.
The EU sanctioned Kremlin Chief of Staff Anton Vaino, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and military chiefs, the officials said.
It also imposed restrictions on 351 lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma who voted Feb. 15 to ask Putin to recognize the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics set up by Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Four Russian institutions were added to the sanctions list as well. The overall package includes some trade and financial restrictions.
The sanctions against prominent Russian media figures come after the EU accused Moscow-linked outlets of spreading disinformation about Ukraine.
Prigozhin’s Wagner Group was hit with EU sanctions in December for abuses including “torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.” He denies he controls the private paramilitary group but the U.S.
and EU reject that. The bloc has also sanctioned the Internet Research Agency that it claims is funded by Prigozhin and conducts disinformation campaigns targeting Ukraine.
The West continues to grapple with the best way to retaliate against Russia for actions that fall short of a military incursion into Ukraine, even as concerns persist over the risks of a broader conflict.
The EU has acknowledged the limited scope of its initial sanctions package.
The bloc decided not to wield its entire “arsenal” of potential sanctions immediately, Borrell told reporters on Tuesday, because it expects more steps by Putin.
The Russian leader said Tuesday he doesn’t currently plan to send troops — he has called them “peacekeepers” — into the breakaway areas of eastern Ukraine, although treaties he signed with the separatist leaders allow him to do so and to build bases.
He demanded that Ukraine accept Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014, and renounce its ambition of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Ukraine on Wednesday moved toward declaring a nationwide state of emergency as the U.S.
and the U.K. continue to warn that Russia may be preparing a full-scale invasion after a military buildup of as many as 190,000 personnel near the Ukrainian border. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed these allegations as “hysteria” and denied it has any plans to invade.
(Updates with detail in second paragraph)
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