EU removes billionaires Usmanov and Fridman from sanctions list, extends restrictions on 3,000+ others for five years

On September 22, EU member states agreed to remove two Russian billionaires from the bloc's sanctions list — USM Holdings founder Alisher Usmanov and Alfa Group co-founder Mikhail Fridman. At the same time, they extended the broader sanctions regime, covering more than 3,000 individuals and entities, through September 22, 2029, replacing the previous six-month review cycle.

Dropping Usmanov and Fridman was a political precondition for the long extension. France pushed for Usmanov's removal in exchange for securing a pardon for a French citizen in Azerbaijan, while Luxembourg demanded Fridman's removal after he filed a $16 billion lawsuit against the country.

Because EU sanctions decisions require unanimous approval from all 27 member states, any single country can block them. That created time pressure too: the sanctions list was originally set to expire on September 15, and countries hastily extended it by just a week to keep negotiating. Tensions flared when Slovakia and France demanded Usmanov's removal, only to be blocked by the other 25 states, and further when Luxembourg raised the same demand over Fridman. Latvia remained the sole holdout until September 22, when it dropped its opposition through a procedure known as "constructive abstention."

According to Alyona Vandysheva of Transparency International Russia, removing the two billionaires was effectively the only way to preserve the rest of the sanctions regime, since there was no separate vote on their cases — had a single country, such as Estonia, voted against the overall package, the entire sanctions list would have lapsed.

Both men had previously challenged their sanctions in court. In April 2024, Fridman and Pyotr Aven won an EU court ruling annulling sanctions that applied to them between February 2022 and March 2023, after judges found the Council lacked sufficient evidence. Usmanov, however, lost his own court challenge in February 2024.

With the new decision, both businessmen can now unfreeze EU bank accounts and property, travel freely within the Schengen Area, and register companies or do business in Europe. However, Latvia and Estonia have said they plan to impose national sanctions on the pair, meaning restrictions will effectively remain in place in those two countries.