EU Insider's 16 September report on this story described a EU sanctions regime running on borrowed time: ambassadors had failed to renew close to 3,000 individual Russia sanctions listings by their normal six-month deadline, and only a seven-day technical extension -- to midnight on 22 September -- was keeping the whole file from lapsing. The holdup was France, which had joined Slovakia in demanding the delisting of Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, citing unspecified "national security interests." Nine days on, the clock has run out and the compromise has landed largely as that reporting suggested it might.
France's interest in Usmanov's case traced back to Azerbaijan, where French nationals were being held. Within days of the EU's 22-23 September decision to remove Usmanov from the sanctions list, Azerbaijan pardoned one of the detained French citizens, Martin Ryan. The sequencing leaves little ambiguity about the mechanism: Paris used its veto over a renewal that required unanimity among all 27 member states to extract a bilateral prisoner release from a non-EU government, using a Russian oligarch's sanctions status as the currency.
Mikhail Fridman came off the list by a different route. Luxembourg argued that if Usmanov was being delisted, Fridman should be too, pointing to a legal claim of roughly $16 billion Fridman has brought against the Grand Duchy over his frozen assets there. Slovakia, separately, vetoed continuing sanctions on Fridman, forcing his removal as part of the wider package. Italy and Croatia had already signalled they would accept an Usmanov delisting if that was what it took to save the other roughly 3,000 listings -- illustrating how quickly a single blocked name can reshape the incentives for everyone else at the table.
Even with France, Slovakia and Luxembourg aligned, the deal nearly failed a second time. Latvia blocked the emerging compromise on 22 September, warning against easing pressure on Moscow at a moment when the war continues. It reversed course the following day, abstaining rather than vetoing, which was enough to let the remaining 26 member states reach unanimity on 23 September -- the legal threshold EU sanctions renewals require.
The headline change is not only who came off the list but how long the rest of it now stays on. The roughly 3,000 remaining individual listings were extended for 36 months rather than the standard six, pushing the next scheduled renewal fight out to 2029. An Irish EU presidency spokesperson -- Ireland holds the rotating Council presidency -- called the negotiation "difficult" but said the extension "enhances the durability and predictability of the EU sanctions framework." The subtext is plain: fewer renewal votes means fewer chances for any single capital to hold the entire list hostage to a bilateral demand, which is exactly what just happened twice in one negotiation.
Ukraine's reaction was pointed. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, presidential commissioner for sanctions policy, said: "We consider the EU's decision not to extend the sanctions against Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman very strange." Vlasiuk argued that both men's Kremlin ties -- the basis for their original listing -- are unchanged, that the timing cuts against tightening US sanctions pressure, and that removing sanctioned individuals to solve unrelated diplomatic problems should not become standard EU practice. Kyiv says it will now propose fresh sanctions on other Russian oligarchs tied to the defence sector who currently face no EU restrictions at all. Separately, the United Kingdom -- which sanctions Russia through its own, EU-independent regime -- confirmed both Usmanov and Fridman remain on its national list, meaning neither man's global asset freeze or travel ban has actually ended; only the EU dimension of it has.
The unanimity rule that let France and Slovakia hold nearly 3,000 sanctions listings hostage to two individual delistings is the same rule that governs every EU foreign-policy decision requiring all 27 capitals to agree -- the exact mechanism 11 member states asked Kaja Kallas to weaken in the CFSP reform letter EU Insider covered on 2 September. This episode is the clearest illustration yet of what that reform debate is actually about: a single government can now credibly threaten to let an entire sanctions regime lapse in order to extract a bilateral concession from a country outside the EU altogether. Tripling the renewal interval to 36 months buys Brussels time before the next such standoff, but it does not remove the underlying leverage point, and Kyiv's warning that other capitals may try the same play next time is the story to watch heading into any future renewal.
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