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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The discussion about a possible lifting of sanctions on two Russian oligarchs — Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov — requires facts, said the President of Ukraine’s Commissioner for Sanctions Policy, Vladyslav Vlasyuk.
"And those facts certainly do not boil down to the claim that these are simply ‘Russian businessmen’ who were once close to the Kremlin," Vlasyuk emphasized. "In the case of Mikhail Fridman, it is worth recalling a notable episode in an American court. In the U.S. federal court decision in the Alfa Bank v. Center for Public Integrity case, it was documented in detail that for many years there were serious public allegations against Fridman, Petr Aven, and Alfa structures, including allegations concerning drug trafficking and money laundering."
He said that the case materials even included contacts with representatives of the Colombian Cali drug cartel and assertions about the movement of drug-related funds through Alfa Bank. At the same time, the court did not find that Fridman was engaged in drug trafficking and specifically noted that these allegations were not the subject of criminal prosecution and were not proven. Fridman denied them.
"But the very scale and nature of the documented history are hard to reconcile with current attempts to present Fridman simply as a persecuted private entrepreneur for whom Europe should make an exception," Vlasyuk emphasized. "Even more concrete is the case of Alisher Usmanov. The foundation of his industrial empire is USM, one of whose main assets remains Metalloinvest — one of the largest Russian mining and metallurgical holdings. And here we are no longer talking about abstract ‘ties to Russia.’"
He said that the Lebedinsky and Mikhailovsky mining and processing plants, which belong to Metalloinvest, supplied ore and other products to Russian industrial enterprises, including the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works and Tulachermet. The products of those enterprises were then used in supply chains for Uralvagonzavod — an enterprise of the state corporation Rostec — which builds tanks for the occupying army.
"So the connection appears quite material: USM → Metalloinvest → raw materials and metallurgy → supplier enterprises → Uralvagonzavod/Rostec → Russian military equipment. In addition, the European Union itself, in its sanctions rationale, names Metalloinvest as Usmanov’s largest asset and notes that it operates in a sector that provides substantial revenues to the government of the Russian Federation. In 2025 year the EU Court rejected Usmanov’s challenge to his continued inclusion on the sanctions list. So today the question is very simple. On what factual basis should Europe conclude that the circumstances for which such persons were sanctioned have disappeared? Russian aggression has not ended. The Russian military-industrial complex continues to manufacture weapons. The Russian war economy continues to consume metal, ore, telecommunications, and financial resources. Sanctions are not a reward and not a punishment for a good or bad biography. They are a foreign policy tool aimed at limiting the resources and capabilities of a state that is waging war," the commissioner added.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Не просто "бізнесмени, що були близькі до Кремля". В ОП зробили заяву про санкції проти Усманова і Фрідмана". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
