Slovakia did not secure any EU-sanctions relief for Russia, despite having pressured fellow member states until the last minute.<\/p>\n
Its EU ambassador had been pushing to remove visa-bans and asset-freezes on two Russian oligarchs \u2013 Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov<\/a> \u2013 until 4PM on Saturday (14 March).<\/p>\n Slovakia had threatened to let the EU\u2019s whole Russia blacklist of some 2,670 people and entities legally expire on Sunday if it did not get its way, during three meetings in the EU Council this week.<\/p>\n It got verbal support from the equally Russia-friendly Hungary, which had also sought to delist Fridman and Usmanov, as well as five other Russians, according to EU diplomats.<\/p>\n But Hungary did not join Slovakia\u2019s veto on the sanctions rollover and dropped its list-of-seven as the week went by.<\/p>\n Slovak diplomats are not authorised to answer press questions.<\/p>\n And its EU ambassador, Juraj Nociar, also said little inside the EU Council, except for reading out national decisions.<\/p>\n When asked why Slovakia gave in with nothing in return, one EU diplomat said: \u201cBecause they were isolated and it [the veto] was stupid. But ask them\u201d.<\/p>\n A second EU diplomat said: \u201cYour guess is as good as mine. One of the strangest U-turns I\u2019ve seen\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cNo idea. They haven\u2019t explained \u2026 we sincerely don\u2019t know,\u201d said a third EU diplomat.<\/p>\n A fourth EU diplomat said the EU Commission had promised Slovakia to review the Fridman and Usmanov listings if they won EU court challenges against the sanctions \u2014 but that is standard practice anyway.<\/p>\n The Russia sanctions renewal, which happens every six months, did delist seven other people.<\/p>\n The best-known was a Dutch oil trader, Niels Troost, who had traded Russian oil in violation of EU price-caps, while claiming that a US conman had falsely persuaded him the CIA would give him \u201cnon-official cover\u201d to do so.<\/p>\n Troost is also under UK and Swiss sanctions, but the Swiss foreign ministry told EUobserver: \u201cIf the EU delists someone, Switzerland follows suit\u201d.<\/p>\n The other one was a Russian oligarch\u2019s daughter, Nikolaevna Bolotova, who owned luxury homes in Croatia and Latvia, allegedly on her father\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n They were let off the hook because the EU Council\u2019s legal services felt they had \u201cweak cases\u201d against their legal challenges in the EU courts in Luxembourg, not because of Slovak-type political lobbying, EU diplomats said.<\/p>\n The other five were deleted because they had recently died, according to an internal EU document seen by EUobserver.<\/p>\n These included two ageing Russian politicians (Pavel Kachkaev and Sergei Marvin) and three Iranian military commanders killed in US and Israeli air-strikes in the \u201912 Day War\u2019 last June (Mohammad Bagheri, Amir Hajizadeh, and Hossein Salami).<\/p>\n Orb\u00e1n next to break<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Slovakia\u2019s U-turn on the sanctions rollover still left Hungary\u2019s vetoes on \u20ac90bn of EU funds <\/a>for Ukraine and on the 20th round of Russia sanctions.<\/p>\n Other EU leaders will try to break Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n at an EU summit in Brussels on 19 March.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Orb\u00e1n insists on his current course, he would be crossing a bridge that has never crossed before, which is highly problematic,\u201d said a senior EU diplomat.<\/p>\n