The European Commission formally presented its 21st package of sanctions against Russia on Tuesday, June 9, at a press conference at the Berlaymont Building in Brussels, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas standing side by side to announce the most ambitious financial crackdown on Moscow the bloc has attempted. The package proposes listing 170 individuals and entities, including close to 90 banks — the largest single-batch bank listing in the history of EU sanctions against Russia — which would bring the total number of listed Russian banks to more than 100, accounting for more than half of the country's 213 internationally connected lenders. "Brick by brick, we are collapsing the foundations of Russia's war economy," Kallas said in a post on social media announcing the package.
All banks listed under the package will come under the full weight of EU restrictive measures, including asset freezes, travel bans, and transaction prohibitions. The proposal must still be reviewed and approved unanimously by the Council of the European Union before it takes effect — a process that typically takes several weeks and requires all 27 member states to agree. The package focuses on what von der Leyen described as the sectors with the highest impact on Russia's ability to sustain its war in Ukraine: energy, financial services and cryptocurrencies, trade, and — in a first — fisheries. "Today we are putting forward the 21st sanctions package. We focus on the sectors with the highest impact. And this time it includes for the very first time fisheries," von der Leyen said.
Transaction Bans, Crypto Platforms, and a New Third-Country Weapon
Beyond the headline bank listing, the package introduces transaction bans on 35 banks — four of which are located outside Russia — and proposes freezing the assets of institutions within third countries that have been used to route money around existing EU restrictions. Alongside the bank measures, the Commission proposes transaction bans on 11 cryptocurrency platforms that EU officials say have been instrumental in helping Russia evade Western financial restrictions, including platforms operating in third countries.
The crypto measures go further than any previous EU sanctions package. For the first time, the Commission is proposing the creation of a new legal instrument that would allow the EU to impose a complete ban on crypto-asset services operating from an entire third country — rather than only blacklisting individual platforms — as a deterrent to governments that host exchanges facilitating Russian evasion. Von der Leyen explained the intent directly: "We will introduce the possibility of a full third country ban for crypto asset services. It will act as a strong deterrent for the countries hosting platforms that help Russia evade our sanctions." She confirmed that Kyrgyzstan had already become the first country targeted by the EU's existing anti-circumvention tool, in part because of its role in Russian cryptocurrency transactions. The 21st package also targets 20 additional banks, crypto firms, platforms, and oil traders in third countries that the Commission says have serviced sanctioned Russian individuals or entities or have actively helped circumvent EU measures already in force.
Energy: Oil Price Cap Frozen, LNG Tanker Sales Banned
On the energy front, the package includes a temporary freeze on the Russian oil price cap — a mechanism under which Western countries agree not to provide shipping and insurance services for Russian crude sold above a set price ceiling — while the Commission assesses adjustments. The freeze is intended to prevent Russia from exploiting any gap in the cap's pricing while negotiations on its future level continue among G7 members. The Commission is also proposing to ban the sale of liquefied natural gas tankers to Russia, extending to the LNG sector the restrictions already applied to oil tankers under previous packages. Russia's ability to export LNG to global markets has been a persistent point of contention within the EU, given that several member states — particularly in central and eastern Europe — remain partially dependent on Russian gas flows despite significant diversification efforts since 2022.
The LNG tanker ban reflects a strategic judgement by the Commission that Russia's Yamal and Arctic LNG projects, which supply markets in Asia and have increasingly been used to circumvent European energy restrictions, are a revenue stream that EU-flagged or EU-insured ships should not be supporting. The 20th sanctions package, adopted in April 2026, had already significantly tightened energy-sector restrictions; the 21st package builds on that foundation by extending tanker restrictions and including new anti-evasion tools aimed at the shadow fleet of vessels used to move Russian crude outside the G7 price cap framework.
Drones, Aerospace Metals, and a First for Fisheries
In the trade and military-industrial sphere, the Commission is proposing additional export restrictions on metals and alloys used in Russia's aerospace and defence industries, and new export bans on drone ground support equipment along with jamming and launch systems — components that EU intelligence assessments have flagged as still reaching Russian manufacturers through third-country intermediaries. "We are targeting more metals and alloys used in the aerospace and defense sectors. For drones, we propose new export bans on ground support equipment and jamming and launch systems, among other items," von der Leyen said.
The inclusion of fisheries in an EU Russia sanctions package for the first time signals a significant expansion of the economic sectors Brussels is prepared to target. Russia is the world's largest exporter of several fish species including pollock and crab, and EU officials have argued that continued European imports of Russian seafood — which surged after the invasion of Ukraine as energy restrictions displaced fishing-sector revenues from the Commission's earlier measures — represent a revenue stream that indirectly funds the war effort. Specific details of the fisheries measures were not immediately published alongside the broader package announcement, but von der Leyen confirmed they were included in the Commission's formal proposal to the Council.
The Evasion Network the Package Is Built to Dismantle
EU officials have been increasingly explicit in recent months that the challenge facing the sanctions regime is not the comprehensiveness of its prohibitions but its enforcement against a Russian economy that has spent four years developing a dense network of smaller banks, trading companies, and crypto infrastructure specifically designed to route transactions around sanctioned entities. The 21st package's focus on smaller and third-country lenders reflects that evolving picture: with Russia's largest internationally connected banks already on EU lists, Moscow has shifted its trade and finance flows through hundreds of smaller institutions that until now operated below the EU's targeting threshold. The proposal to bring the total of listed banks above 100 — more than half of all internationally connected Russian lenders — is an explicit attempt to collapse that evasion architecture at its roots rather than chase individual conduits.
The package now passes to the Council of the EU for review and unanimous approval. Historically, EU sanctions packages against Russia have cleared the Council within two to four weeks of the Commission's proposal, though the unanimity requirement means that objections from any single member state can complicate or delay adoption. Kallas described the package as part of an ongoing strategy designed to increase Russia's incentive to negotiate an end to its war in Ukraine: "It will target banks, weapons manufacturers, oil traders, refineries, and crypto operators in third countries." The peace negotiation context — and the explicit framing of sanctions not merely as punishment but as leverage — reflects the EU's evolving position as diplomatic efforts between Washington, Moscow, and Kyiv remain fragile and unresolved.
