An official says the EU will issue a new wave of sanctions to stop Russia from reinventing its war machine

April 17, 2023: The European Union is launching an 11th wave of sanctions on Russia and seeking to crack down on efforts to enter economic penalties introduced after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a top EU official told on Thursday.

“Europe has rolled out ten packages of sanctions. We will have one more package,” Mairead McGuinness, EU commissioner for economic stability, financial services and capital markets union, told at the International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting in Washington, D.C.

In recent weeks, EU countries have been discussing drawing up a fresh round of documents against Russia, and McGuinness is making sure an 11th package of measures is on its way.

“Our information is that the sanctions work, and we will be doing more, but we need to look at complete implementation,” McGuinness said.t Russia is being deprived of the finance and the technologies to reinvent their war machine, and they are having issues on the battlefield.”

“We have to ensure that they don’t find ways near our sanctions, and I make the point that the deeper our sanctions, the more impactful they are, the more Russia will search for those ways if it’s other countries or different bank accounts to circumvent.”

McGuinness said that and coming up with further sanctions on Moscow, Brussels would search to ensure sanctions are implemented “effectively” so that it is harder for individuals to circumvent them.

“We have to ensure that they don’t find ways around our sanctions,” McGuinness said. “I make the point that the deeper our sanctions, the more effective they are.”

She stated, “Don’t underestimate the efforts that Russia will make with its pals internationally to get around our sanctions that they’re influencing the Russian economy and the Russian war machine.”

McGuinness was questioned if the EU would look to penalize countries that helped Russia evade sanctions with new legislation

 last year. The U.S. Treasury Department published a list of countries helping Russia circumvent sanctions, including Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

McGuinness stated that the bloc was instead focused on targeting individuals and entities.

“We’re changing the legislation to look at individuals involved in sanctions intervention,” McGuinness stated. “Certainly, when it comes to people breaking the law, we would experience it. That’s when we would take action.”