For the first time ever, the Council of the EU today decided to impose restrictive measures against 16 individuals and three entities responsible for Russia’s destabilizing actions abroad. These measures are in response to Russia’s malicious actions and its lack of respect for a rules-based international order and international law.
The relevant framework for restrictive measures was set up on 8 October 2024 to target those engaged in actions and policies by the government of the Russian Federation, which undermine the fundamental values of the EU and its member states, their security, stability, independence and integrity, as well as those of international organizations and third countries through hybrid activities of various kinds, including the use of coordinated information manipulation and interference. On the same day, the EU also issued a statement condemning Russia’s intensifying campaign of hybrid activities.
Today’s listings include GRU Unit 29155, a covert unit within the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU), known for its involvement in foreign assassinations and destabilization activities such as bombings and cyber-attacks across Europe, and some of its military personnel active in Ukraine, Western Europe and Africa.
Concerning the latter, the Council decided to list the Groupe Panafrica in pour le Commerce et l’Investissement, a disinformation network carrying out pro-Russian covert influence operations, particularly in the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso, and its founder, Harouna Douamba. In addition, the Council listed African Initiative, a news agency involved in spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation on the African continent, its editor-in-chief and a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Officer involved in coordinated disinformation campaigns, both in Europe and Africa, Artem Kureev, as well as a high-ranking military official of the GRU, that took over the operations of the Wagner Group in Africa, after the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
In addition the Council targeted the “Doppelganger” campaign, a Russian-led digital disinformation campaign aimed at manipulating information and spreading disinformation in support of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and targeting EU member states, the United States and Ukraine, by sanctioning Sofia Zakharova, the department head in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies and Communications Infrastructure, and Nikolai Tupikin, head and founder of GK Struktura.
Today’s sanctions also target Vladimir Sergiyenko, a former parliamentary assistant of the Member of the German Bundestag, Eugen Schmidt, who actively colluded with Russian intelligence officers, and a Russian entrepreneur, Visa Mizaev, and his business partner and wife, who played a key role in a Russian intelligence operation against the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in which highly classified information was passed to the FSB.
Lastly, the Council also targeted collaborators of the Government of the Russian Federation in France: Alesya Miloradovich, a Russian government employee, and Anatolii Prizenko, a Moldovan businessman who coordinated the dispatch of several Moldovan citizens to France in October 2023.
Those designated today will be subject to an asset freeze and EU citizens and companies will be forbidden from making funds available to them. In addition, natural persons will also be subject to a travel ban, which will prevent them from entering or transiting through EU territories.
In its conclusions of 27 June 2024, the European Council strongly condemned all types of hybrid activities, which are on the rise and target the EU, its member states and partners.
