The European Union has removed yandex founder arkady vlazh and several other people from the sanctions list. This is reported in the Official Journal of the European Union, UNN reports.
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On March 12, the EU extended for six months the sanctions imposed on russia in response to its full-scale aggression against Ukraine.
The EU Council has decided to extend restrictive measures against those responsible for threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine for another six months, until September 15, 2024
The statement said that the EU Council had decided not to extend sanctions against the three individuals. Their names became known after they were published in an EU journal. It turned out that they are yandex founder arkady vlazh, former vice president of sistema corporation (owner of MTS) sergei mndoyants, and Slovak citizen and president of the European branch of the pro-putin night wolves motorcycle club josef hambalek.
vlazh lives in Israel. In August 2023, a year and a half after the outbreak of the great war, he condemned russia's invasion of Ukraine. In early February 2024, it became known that yandex was being split up, its russian share being bought out by local businessmen for $5.2 billion. After that, vlazh had no business ties with russia.
According to the EU, mndoyants was a board member of a russian think tank that advises the kremlin on foreign and defense policy. The reasons for his exclusion from the sanctions lists were not reported.
josef hambalek was accused of spreading pro-russian propaganda. But Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would demand that the Slovak citizen be removed from the list. He noted that gambalek is the only citizen of an EU country on the list.
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In addition, the EU removed from the list nine individuals who died in 2023. Among them are the leader of the private military company wagner dmitry utkin, general gennady zhydko, who commanded the invasion of Ukraine in May-July 2022, general oleg tsokov, who was killed in Berdiansk , and others.