The EU extends the sanctions against Russia and supports investing 500 million euros to accelerate the production of weapons

The European Union continues to work on cornering Russia. These restrictive measures are currently very broad and include restrictions on trade, finance, technology and dual-use goods, industry, transport and luxury items.

In total, Member States have so far approved 11 packages of measures that also cover, on the other hand, the ban on importing or transferring seaborne crude oil and certain oil products from Russia to the EU, the removal of SWIFT from several Russian banks and the suspension of broadcasting activities and licenses of several Kremlin-backed disinformation outlets.. In addition, in the latest wave, specific measures were introduced to strengthen the EU's ability to counter sanctions circumvention.

“Sanctions continue to hit Russia hard, reducing its ability to finance the war,” recalls the European Commission.. María Vallés, a doctor specializing in EU restrictive measures, explained to 20minutos that the process of slowing down the approval of sanctions “is normal”, “for various reasons.”

On the one hand, he says, “more sophisticated measures are already seen compared to the first ones that were approved, which were more classic and global”. That sophistication “takes time,” says the analyst. On the other hand, it is also necessary to count on the fact that the countries “now have a different mood” because there are some measures “of which they also feel their effects”. He did see the 'siege' as a fundamental step to prevent Russia from skipping the measures that have already been agreed and implemented.

On the other hand, the foreign ministers of the European Union also supported this Thursday the plan to dedicate 500 million euros from the community budget -and perhaps the use of other tools- for investment in weapons and in precisely a rearmament of the bloc, whose ammunition has been depleted by donations to Kiev.

ASAP, as this law in support of ammunition production in Europe has been baptized, corresponds to the third way of the European plan to donate one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine in a year, in addition to those that refer, in parallel, to the delivery of all possible stocks that the Member States have in their possession and to place common orders to the industry so that they are quickly replaced.