The Russian head of world chess and Asian sanctions-busters feature in the draft new round of EU measures against Moscow for the Ukraine war — which also cover chemical weapons, killer drones, mercenaries in Belize, crypto, metals, and salt.
The president of the international chess federation, Fide, Arkady Dvorkovich, is to be put under an EU visa-ban and asset-freeze on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, according to internal documents seen by EUobserver.
The former Kremlin aide, “publicly supported the annexation of Crimea and called occupied Ukrainian cities ‘new territories’ of the Russian Federation”, as well as organising chess competitions in conquered lands, the EU said.
He is one of 29 individuals to be blacklisted along with other sports and cultural celebrities, which might make headlines at a time when Fifa, the world football body, is saying Russia should be let in out of the cold of cultural boycotts.
Russian athletes have also been banned from competing under their flag in the Winter Olympics in Italy, even as the EU plans to now blacklist Stanislav Pozdniakov, the president of Russia’s Olympic committee, who “endorsed the mobilisation of Russian athletes to go to war”, the internal documents said.
The 81-year-old director of St Petersburg’s world-famous Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, is also to be no longer welcomed in Europe.
Piotrovsky was seen “likening the global dissemination of Russian culture to a ‘special military operation,’ directly alluding to the [Ukraine] invasion”, the EU said.
He also backed Russia’s theft of Ukrainian art and “conducted unauthorised archaeological excavations in occupied Crimea, including the destruction of protected Ukrainian heritage sites”, to legitimise Russia’s annexation.
Other sporting and cultural figures to be banned as pro-war cheerleaders include Mikhail Mamiashvili, the head of Russia’s wrestling federation, who “maintains close personal and professional ties with the highest levels of Russian leadership, including president Vladimir Putin”, the EU said.
They also include singer Timur Yunusov, who performed in Crimea, and theatre producer Igor Solonin, who turned a theatre in Russian-occupied Mariupol into a propaganda circus against “Ukrainian Nazis”.
Soviet-era architecture in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (Source: Ken Flottman)
Kyrgyzstan and UAE
Culture wars aside, the new sanctions target those in Central Asia and the Middle East who are helping Moscow to get hold of prohibited technology or to smuggle oil in unseaworthy vessels to keep its war effort going.
The EU is to impose a blanket ban on exports of metal-working tools and voice-data conversion technology to Kyrgyzstan on grounds of “systematic” re-exports to Russia for use by its military.
In the first 10 months of 2025, Kyrgyzstan imported 800 percent more of the items from the EU than before the full Ukraine war, and exported 1,200 percent more of them to its Russian neighbour, the EU noted.
Two Russian businessmen — Aleksandr Zhdanov and Alimzhan Bekov — are to be blacklisted for smuggling German semiconductor materials into Russia on a route via Poland, Turkey, and Kazakhstan.
Their Kazakh company, United Trading Group, is also being designated, but the German manufacturer — UrSeCo Handels — is being left off the hook, even though Zhdanov is a “limited partner” in the German firm.
Russian businessmen Dmitry Malyuta and Denis Shishkin are being listed for importing cotton (used in gunpowder production) from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while Uzbek cotton firms Raw Materials Cellulose and Fargona Kimyo Zavodi are to join them for selling it to the Russian military.
The incoming sanctions expose how the EU’s Middle East ‘ally’, the UAE, is increasingly helping Europe’s enemy.
Some nine Emirati firms are to be blacklisted — making up the largest non-Russian cohort in the 20th round.
Three are to be hit for tech-smuggling (EDM, SCT Chemicals, and Turboshaft), one for helping ship “stolen Ukrainian grain” (Levant Fleet), and five for helping operate Russian oil-smuggling ‘shadow fleet’ tankers (Centauri Services, Lark Ship Management, Lumen Ship Management, Novus Middle East, and Alghaf Marine).
Three Chinese firms are also being listed for allegedly supplying tech to Russia’s army: Brightmile, ETS Solutions, and Yangzhou Yangjie Electronic Technology.
EU firms are to be banned from doing business with the ports of Kulevi in Georgia and Karimun in Indonesia on grounds that they ship Russian oil.
And the EU is adding 42 mostly oil tankers to a list of what will become 648 ‘shadow fleet’ vessels to be banned from calling at EU ports or receiving any maritime services by European firms in future.
Most of these sail under flags of convenience, with Panama (nine ‘shadow’ ships), Palau (five), Guinea (three), Cameroon (three), Barbados (two), Sierra Leone (two), and St Kitts & Nevis (two) providing the most cover.
The EU is currently pressing flag-issuers to strip blacklisted vessels of nationality, so that they can be legally boarded and seized as ‘stateless’ ships.
Nato soldiers training how to use FPV drones in the UK in 2025 (Source: Nato)
Chemical weapons and drones
Looking directly at the Ukrainian battlefield, the EU is to blacklist two military Russian commanders, Aleksej Rtisjtsjev and Andrej Martsjenko, because their units “systematically employ chemical weapons [no details given] against Ukraine”, in violation of UN accords.
The draft designations show how the war is seeing a proliferation of Russian killer-drone technology.
They name 11 Russian entities and two businessmen who make light, first-person view (FPV) drones, as well as heavy, long-distance models, such as the Iranian-designed Shahed UAV.
Russian firms Simbirsk Design Bureau and Aero-HIT, for instance, each produce 10,000 FPV attack drones per month, which are “valued for their destructive capabilities, including carrying anti-tank mines and smaller warheads”, the EU said.
But Russia’s global military footprint also reaches well beyond Europe.
Moran Security Group, in Belize, is to be blacklisted for “employing highly trained ex-Russian military personnel” to protect “cargo vessels — primarily oil tankers — from piracy”, although this did not stop the US from seizing Russian tankers taking oil from Venezuela.
The EU sanctions are designed to degrade the Russian economy as well as its military industrial complex.
And with this in mind, the EU is banning its companies from engaging with “any crypto asset service provider … that is established in Russia”, or from buying any of Russia’s three digital currencies — called A7A5, RUBx, and the Digital Ruble.
It is stopping EU transactions with four banks using crypto currencies to help previously-barred Russian lenders from reaching financial markets — Keremet and OJSC Capital Bank of Central Asia from Kyrgyzstan, the International Bank of Tajikistan, and Joint Development Bank from Laos.
And it is imposing a full EU asset-freeze and business ban on the Kyrgyzstan-based CJSC TengriCoin crypto-exchange.
The 20th round is to ban imports from Russia of several grades of metals from the copper, nickel, aluminium, molybdenum, cobalt, and magnesium sectors.
It is even stopping imports of “table salt” and “dressed furskins (including heads, tails, paws and other pieces or cuttings)”.
Pepper was not mentioned in the draft EU sanctions (Source: Curtis Gregory Perry)
Anything left to sanction?
EU diplomats will discuss the proposal this week, with a view to agreement in time for the symbolic invasion-anniversary on 24 February.
But the Putin-friendly Hungary and Slovakia have in the past delayed EU decisions or used their vetoes to water down measures and the final list might still be changed.
Maritime countries Greece and Malta have also in the past resisted EU moves that would impact the global shipping industry.
Meanwhile, if mention of banal items such as table salt suggests the cumulative effect of the past 19 rounds has become almost comprehensive, there are still no EU sanctions on other pro-war VIPs, many oligarchs, and top Russian firms.
The 20th round makes no mention of pro-war orthodox church leader patriarch Kirill or Russian steel mogul Vladimir Lisin, for instance, following previous vetoes by Hungary and Belgium.
The only businessman the EU is to newly blacklist purely on grounds of being “involved in an economic sector providing a substantial source of revenue to the government of the Russian Federation”, as opposed to for military cooperation, is St Petersburg real-estate mogul Andrey Molchanov.
And this comes after the 45 or so oligarchs listed on similar grounds in 2022 launched dozens of lawsuits at the EU courts in Luxembourg.
The draft 20th round sanctions also name several subsidiaries of Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil and Russian insurance firm Soglasie, for instance, which insured “vessels shipping Russian crude oil”.
But it leaves Lukoil and Rosneft themselves off the list, even though they were sanctioned by the US.
It does not propose Russian marine insurer Ingosstrakh, which is sanctioned by the US and UK, and which Estonia had proposed several times before to join the EU blacklist.
It says nothing about a Swedish proposal in January to ban exports of EU-made luxury goods.
And the EU is being forced to use trade laws to impose full bans on purchases of Russian gas, oil, fertilisers, and nuclear energy, in separate moves this year, because trade measures are adopted by qualified majority, while sanctions need unanimity, which let Hungary shield these Russian sectors in past rounds.