The European Union narrowly avoided the collapse of its entire sanctions regime against Russia this week, reaching a last-minute agreement to renew restrictions on nearly 3,000 individuals and entities — but only after France and Luxembourg forced the removal of two of the most prominent oligarchs on the list. The deal, brokered under Ireland's rotating EU presidency just before a midnight deadline, has provoked fierce criticism from Ukraine, the Baltic states, and EU diplomats themselves.

The two men removed from the blacklist are Alisher Usmanov, a 73-year-old Uzbek-Russian businessman with an estimated fortune of €14 billion, and Mikhail Fridman, a Ukrainian-born Russian-Israeli banker worth an estimated $16.6 billion according to Forbes. Both were placed on the EU's sanctions list in 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Usmanov, a former major shareholder in Arsenal football club and long-time president of the International Fencing Federation, was designated as a