Page 14 - RusRPTJul22

“Aleksandra Melnichenko takes good advantage of the fortune and benefits from the wealth of her husband. Together with him, she owns two penthouses with a value of more than $30mn. In March 2022, Aleksandra Melnichenko replaced her husband as the beneficial owner of Firstline Trust, managed by Linetrust,” the EU official journal claims.
Other As reported by bne IntelliNews, Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill was removed from the EU’s sanctions list at the demand of Hungary. The EU ambassadors agreed to drop the Russian religious leader from the list of people penalised after a threat of a veto by Budapest. The EU also sanctioned servicemen and commanders of the 64th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army of the Russian Federation, “which killed, raped and tortured civilians in Bucha, Ukraine. These atrocities constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes”. The Head of the National Defence Control Centre Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev nicknamed “the Butcher of Mariupol” is sanctioned as well. He is identified as the commander overseeing the siege of Mariupol, where he has drawn on tactics previously used in the siege of Aleppo, Syria, in directing Russian forces’ bombardment of Mariupol.
The EU will also suspend the broadcasting activities in the EU of three more Russian state-owned outlets: Rossiya RTR/RTR Planeta, Rossiya 24 / Russia 24 and TV Centre International.
The sixth sanction package also officially imposes the previous ban on the provision of accounting, public relations and consultancy services.
Notably, the EU now also bans the provision of cloud services to Russia. This will add more pressure on the short- to medium-term deficit of hardware and processing capacities, with the private and public IT/AI/tech projects having to compete for scarce imported resources such as servers and other data processing tools.
The EU is also expanding a list of dual-use items under trade restrictions for Russia and Belarus, as well as including 80 chemicals which can be used to produce chemical weapons.
The fifth EU sanction package enacted in April included an embargo on €4bn worth of Russian coal imports, an asset freeze of “several” Russian banks, a ban on Russian trucks and ships in European ports, a ban on high-tech goods exports to Russia of up to €10bn, and additional import limitations for up to €5.5bn of Russian goods.
The fourth package of EU sanctions enacted on March 15 included: an import ban on steel products; a ban on new investment into the Russian energy sector; a ban on transactions with certain Russian state-owned enterprises (SOEs); and an export ban on luxury goods amongst other things. The list of sanctioned oligarchs was also extended.
Previously the EU also added 14 more Russian top executives and billionaires to the sanctions list in addition to initial sanctions against six Russian oligarchs.
14 RUSSIA Country Report October 2020 www.intellinews.com