New package of European sanctions may hit Kazakhstan

As the DW broadcaster reported, the new package of European sanctions may hit Kazakhstan. This follows from a statement made by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen while on an official visit to Kyiv.

According to von der Leyen, the new 11th package of sanctions is going to include three core elements.

The first part of the sanctions is going to expand the list of goods prohibited from exporting to Russia through third-party states. The EU also wants to create new tools to prevent third-party states from breaching these sanctions.

“If we see that European goods are going to third-party states and then pop up in Russia, the European Commission is able to suggest European Union member-states imposing sanctions on exports of such goods,» von der Leyen said.

She also pointed to the increase of extremely unusual trade flows. As a result, goods related to technology and aviation might be targeted with export restrictions.

However, von der Leyen underlined that all these measures will be applied only after rigorous risk analysis and approval by all member states.

The third element of sanctions is banning the activities of shadow entities from Russia and third-party states that are intentionally breaching European sanctions.

Earlier this month, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency wrote that among those countries that have been identified as facilitators of Russia in its efforts to bypass the sanctions are Kazakhstan, Armenia and the UAE.

In April, the U.S. and the U.K. said that they can impose secondary sanctions against those Kazakhstani companies and banks that facilitate Russia in breaching international sanctions. At the time, Elizabeth Rosenberg, assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, said that Russian secret services are eager to find companies from Kazakhstan ready to supply them with sanctioned goods.

However, in early May, the Russian Izvestiya news outlet reported that many Russian cargo carriers involved in parallel imports started to bypass Kazakhstan due to obstacles the country has created for such carriers.”

In February 2022, Russia unleashed a full-scale war against Ukraine. At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially recognized the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (recognized neither by the world nor by Kazakhstan). Putin declared that the key goals of the invasion are denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. According to the U.N., hundreds of thousands of people have died or were wounded during this war while eight million Ukrainians have left the country.