The European Union is calling for financial sanctions on the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian head of the International Chess Federation, a historian who is a close adviser to President Vladimir Putin, and other top officials.
The proposed list, which was obtained by RFE/RL, is part of the latest round of financial penalties that the 27-member bloc will consider. Any decision, which requires unanimous approval from all members, would likely not be taken until late June, or early July.
Sanctioning Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church — the largest branch of the global Orthodox Christian faith — is seen as a major step for the bloc, which has resisted targeting religious figures.
Kirill is widely known to be close to the Kremlin and Putin. As head of the Russian church, which is by far the largest Christian denomination inside the country, Kirill has given his blessing for the ongoing, all-out war against Ukraine, now in its fifth year.
That has helped fuel a schism between the Russian church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which formally broke away from oversight by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian church.
Kirill also reportedly worked for Soviet intelligence agencies, according to declassified Swiss documents.
The EU document said Kirill “consistently justified and supported Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine,” calling it “sacred.”
Other figures targeted by the EU sanctions including Vladimir Medinsky, a historian who has drawn criticism from other academics about his reinterpretations of Russian and Ukrainian history.
Medinsky served as culture minister under Putin, and was a member of the negotiating team that the Kremlin sent for talks with Ukraine on ending the Russian war.
A series of Russian history books Medinsky oversaw includes a justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The West became fixated with destabilizing the situation inside Russia. The aim was not even hidden: to dismember Russia and to get control over its resources.”
The EU proposal called Medinsky a “central figure in government propaganda.”
The 42 names included in the proposed sanctions list also include Arkady Dvorkovich, a former deputy prime minister who is now the head of the International Chess Federation, known as FIDE; Russia’s sports minister, Mikhail Degtyarev; and the head of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company Vagit Alekperov.
