The European Union court has satisfied the lawsuit of the shareholders of Alfa-Bank Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, the individuals close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to annul their inclusion on the EU sanctions list from February 2022 to March 2023.

The court's decision reads that the grounds on which the businessmen were included on the lists were not sufficiently justified, and the Council of the EU has not provided additional evidence.

"According to the General Court, although the grounds put forward by the Council may be such as to establish, as the case may be, a degree of proximity between Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman and Vladimir Putin or his entourage, they do not demonstrate that they have supported actions or policies that undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, or that they have provided material or financial support to the Russian decision-makers responsible for the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of Ukraine, or that they have benefited from those decision-makers," the Court's statement said.

According to the procedure, the EU Court challenges not the sanctions themselves, but the specific decision of the EU Council. Aven and Fridman contested the decision from 2022. But it has already ceased to be valid – it was replaced by the sanctions decision of 2023, and then 2024.

Although legally, the EU decision does not affect the current restrictions on the oligarchs, it creates political problems for the continuation of sanctions for the next period. In particular, up to 2022, after similar decisions of the European Court, the European Union was forced to stop renewing sanctions against most of Yanukovych's [former pro-Russian president of Ukraine – ed.] associates, who were included in the sanctions list in 2014.

In December 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a claim lodged by fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and his son Oleksandr and lifted sanctions imposed against them by the Council of the European Union on 4 March 2021.

This is not the first such ruling of the EU Court of Justice. It has already annulled decisions that the Council of the EU took in 2019 and 2020. In September 2022, the Council finally removed Viktor and Oleksandr Yanukovych from the sanctions list.

However, another EU sanctions decision, taken in August 2022, is still effective against the Yanukovyches, and it has not yet been appealed, meaning they are still subject to a ban on owning assets in the European Union and entering its territory.