In September 2026, the European Union lifted sanctions from Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman. According to media reports, their removal from the sanctions lists was the result of a political compromise among EU member states. Under the EU’s official position, sanctions are meant not to punish, but to encourage their targets to change their behavior. Yet, unlike the sanctions regime against Syria, no special mechanism was created to lift restrictions on Russian businessmen in exchange for severing ties with the authorities.
How were these decisions made? Why have some businessmen succeeded in getting sanctions lifted through the courts, while others have done so through intergovernmental deals? And to what extent does this system match the stated aims of sanctions policy?
Are Sanctions Punishment?
The EU’s official position rests on the premise that sanctions are not a punishment, but a preventive instrument of foreign policy designed to change the behavior of states, organizations, and individuals. This logic is reflected in the Basic Principles on the Use of Restrictive Measures adopted in 2004 and the Guidelines on their implementation in their 2018 revision. The latter explicitly allow sanctions acts to include incentives intended to encourage targets to change their behavior.
The preventive nature of sanctions, together with general principles of EU law, gives rise to requirements for their application: restrictive measures must be targeted, proportionate to their stated objectives, and subject to regular review. They are not intended as open-ended punishment for past conduct, and keeping a particular person on a sanctions list requires an ongoing legal and factual justification.
Because inclusion on a sanctions list is not a criminal conviction, it does not require proof of a crime to the standard applicable in criminal proceedings. The Council of the EU must, however, have a “sufficiently solid factual basis” for its decision. When sanctions are challenged in court, it is for the Council to substantiate the reasons for listing an individual, while the court examines the supporting facts and evidence.
The Syrian Precedent
The closest precedent for sanctioning businessmen linked to an authoritarian regime is Syria. In May 2011, the EU imposed its first restrictions on members of the Syrian regime in response to the violent suppression of protests. The legal basis was Council Decision 2011/273/CFSP and Regulation No. 442/2011. Initially, the measures targeted those responsible for the repression and provided for asset freezes and EU entry bans. Within months, however, the criteria were broadened: sanctions could now also be applied to individuals and entities that benefited from, or supported, the authorities in power—including businessmen who financed or provided economic assistance to the regime.
In October 2015, the Council significantly changed its approach, allowing the listing of “leading businesspersons operating in Syria.” Given the Assad regime’s control over the economy, large business was deemed closely tied to the country’s political leadership. As a result, there was no longer any need to demonstrate separately that a particular businessman had financed the regime or personally participated in repression.
The sanctions legislation nevertheless contained an important caveat. Under Articles 27(3) and 28(3) of Council Decision 2013/255/CFSP, as amended in 2015, a businessman could not be listed—or remain listed—if there was sufficient information showing that he was not, or was no longer, associated with the regime, did not support or influence it, or did not pose a real risk of circumventing sanctions. In addition, Article 32(2) of Regulation No. 36/2012 explicitly allowed a businessman to provide evidence that sanctions against him were unjustified.
The EU had previously sanctioned businessmen linked to authoritarian regimes—for example, in Myanmar—but the Syrian precedent lay in the fact that specific grounds for non-application and delisting were spelled out directly in the sanctions decision itself. Thus, in March 2022, the EU General Court lifted sanctions against Abdelkader Sabra, who had left the management of a regime-linked company, criticized the authorities, and supported aid to Syrian refugees. In March 2023, the court lifted sanctions against Nizar Assaad, who had distanced himself from the regime as early as 2012. These cases do not prove that sanctions themselves prompted businessmen to break with the regime, but they show that the legislation took such a break into account when deciding whether restrictions should remain in place.
The Russian Case
Preparations for sanctions against Russian businessmen began even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In January and February 2022, the European Commission and the European External Action Service developed restrictive measures jointly with EU member states and coordinated them with the United States and other partners. By February 17, Josep Borrell had announced that a sanctions package had been prepared and could be submitted to the Council for approval. Once the full-scale invasion began, decisions were adopted at speed.
On February 25, the Council adopted Decision 2022/329 and Regulation 2022/330, which broadened the grounds for individual sanctions: businessmen operating in sectors of the economy that provided substantial revenue to the Russian government could now be targeted. There was no need to prove each individual’s personal involvement in the war. Just three days later, Decision 2022/337 and Regulation 2022/336 imposed sanctions on Mikhail Fridman, Alisher Usmanov, and other businessmen.
The speed of preparation was reflected in the quality of some of the justifications. In the cases of Aven and Fridman, the Council relied primarily on press publications, which the court later found insufficient. Some sanctions files were compiled on the basis of a small number of open sources, including Forbes, Wikipedia, and obscure websites. EU courts allowed the use of such sources—since European institutions lack investigative powers in third countries—but required an assessment of their reliability.
Publicly, European leaders justified the restrictions as a way of holding not only the political leadership but also the economic elites accountable for Russia’s aggression. On February 28, 2022, Borrell said that the sanctions targeted those who played a significant economic role in supporting the Putin regime and benefited financially from it. In his words, the restrictions were meant to expose the scale of the Putin elite’s wealth, while those who facilitated the invasion should “pay a price” for their actions. Earlier, a message posted from his official Twitter account had declared: “No more shopping trips to Milan, holidays in Saint-Tropez, or diamonds in Antwerp. This is the first step. We are united.” The tweet was later deleted.
On March 1, 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised to freeze oligarchs’ yachts, luxury cars, and real estate, and on March 11 she declared: “Those who support Putin’s war machine should not be able to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle while bombs fall on innocent people in Ukraine.”
This rhetoric differed from the understanding of sanctions enshrined in EU documents as a preventive rather than punitive instrument. It also left unanswered the question of what change in businessmen’s behavior could serve as grounds for lifting the restrictions.
What Are Sanctions For—and on What Terms Can They Be Lifted?
Unlike the Syrian sanctions regime, the EU legislation adopted in February 2022 contained no specific grounds for removing Russian businessmen from the lists after they severed ties with the Kremlin. They retained the right to seek a review of the sanctions or challenge them in court, but publicly condemning the war did not in itself guarantee that restrictions would be lifted.
In March 2025, the European Commission described the complete and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine as a precondition for reviewing sanctions against Russia as a whole. For businessmen, the route to delisting became breaking with the Russian elite and abandoning business in Russia—but only Arkady Volozh took that path, with sanctions against him lifted in March 2024. Yet by October 2026, restrictions had also been lifted from many Russian businessmen who had made no political statements.
Since the start of the full-scale war, 334 new cases challenging sanctions have been filed with the EU General Court: 103 in 2022, 63 each in 2023 and 2024, and 105 in 2025. At the end of 2025, 125 such cases remained pending. These figures cover all EU sanctions regimes, but the majority concern Russia: in 2024, 47 of 63 cases. As of February 2025, at least 18 successful cases involving Russian businessmen were known.
Russian businessmen have also actively lobbied for delisting at the national level. Since September 2022, Budapest has demanded the removal of Alisher Usmanov, Pyotr Aven, and Viktor Rashnikov, and in 2023 it sought the removal of nine more businessmen. In 2024, Slovakia joined the negotiations, securing the removal of its citizen Jozef Hambálek, who was linked to the Russian Night Wolves motorcycle club. In exchange for Hungary’s support, Bratislava agreed to push for the removal of Usmanov, Nikita Mazepin, and Vyacheslav Kantor, but at the time sanctions against them remained in place. In March 2025, Hungary secured the removal of Kantor, Gulbahor Ismailova (Usmanov’s sister), and Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev. In September of that year, Budapest again demanded the removal of Aven, Dmitry Mazepin, Musa Bazhaev, and Albert Avdolyan, while Slovakia pressed for Usmanov and Fridman. In March 2026, Bratislava renewed its demands, without success. Journalists learned of direct contacts between the Russian and Hungarian foreign ministries regarding the removal of sanctions from Usmanov. In September 2026, France and Luxembourg joined Slovakia’s and Hungary’s initiatives.
France sought Usmanov’s removal as part of negotiations with Azerbaijan over the release of two French citizens. The day after the sanctions were lifted, the Azerbaijani president pardoned one of them, Martin Ryan. Luxembourg, for its part, advocated Fridman’s removal; Fridman had brought a $ 16 billion claim against the country in international investment arbitration over the freezing of his assets. Both cases show that decisions to lift individual sanctions may hinge on diplomatic and legal disputes rather than on the anti-war conduct of the businessmen themselves.
Conclusion
The practice of individual sanctions against Russia’s business elite has exposed three problems.
First, the haste of preparation meant that the files relied on open-source information of questionable legal value. This enabled a number of businessmen to successfully challenge the sanctions before the EU courts. Thus, on April 10, 2024, the General Court annulled the sanctions decisions against Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Fridman that had been in force from February 2022 to March 2023, finding the evidence presented insufficient.
Second, divisions within the EU have allowed individual businessmen to secure the lifting or non-renewal of sanctions through particular member states: Hungary, France, Luxembourg, and Slovakia. Since Council decisions to renew sanctions require unanimity, each member state has considerable power to block them.
Third, and most importantly, there are no clear incentives for targets to change their behavior. Unlike the Syrian case, EU legislation did not create a specific basis for lifting restrictions once a sanctioned person broke ties with the Kremlin. At the same time, from September 2023 to September 2026, the EU removed at least ten Russian businessmen from its lists, citing court rulings, list reviews, and intergovernmental agreements.
Individual sanctions have made Russia’s business elite feel the costs of the war, but they have not produced a mass break with the Kremlin. This is due not only to individual businessmen’s unwillingness to take that step, but also to the absence of clear conditions for lifting restrictions and of any way to move capital out of Russia. The closure of Western markets has only deepened their dependence on the Russian state.
An alternative would be a transparent mechanism for individual delisting based on verifiable actions: ending economic support for the regime, changing ownership structures and sources of income, and eliminating the risk of sanctions circumvention. This could be supplemented by a procedure for the supervised repatriation of capital under European oversight, with participation in Ukraine’s reconstruction treated as an additional condition. Ultimately, the question is not whether anyone’s moral position should be recognized, but whether sanctions policy can deprive the Kremlin of some of the capital and businessmen that generate its revenue.
