The EU, US, UK, and multiple other countries have already announced sanctions on over 2,200 individuals that have contributed to the Russian aggression in Ukraine. I would argue that the number of individuals who should be sanctioned – at the very least prohibited from entering the EU – should be multiplied by at least two thousand.
The EU travel sanctions are currently individually tailored rather than being based on sound and adequate criteria. These sanctions do not send a message to the over 140M Russian citizens to not personally contribute to the aggression.
We need a clear, criteria-based list of individuals who will be automatically sanctioned if they fall under at least one of these criteria:
- Over 1.3M active Russian military personnel (~1M non-conscripts)
- More than 2M members of Putin’s pro-aggression United Russia party
- Tens of thousands of Russian propaganda workers
- Hundreds of thousands of military contractors
- Hundreds of thousands who visited occupied territories without permission
- More than 200,000 FSB members
Could you imagine SS soldiers, nazi party members traveling freely to countries that opposed the nazi regime during WWII? Me either. Today we have better means of distinguishing who is who.
My call is to act in a manner that is consequent to the time we live in – sanctioning by means of prohibiting entry to at least 4M Russians instead of just 2,000 is a necessary, just, and easy thing to do.