European Union ambassadors are set later this week to remove Nikita Mazepin and Violetta Prigozhina from the bloc’s sanctions list, according to multiple diplomats familiar with the file who weren’t authorized to speak on the record.
The EU has imposed asset freezes and visa bans on 2,300 people and entities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022.
Every six months, that blacklist must be prolonged by unanimous consensus of the 27 member states.
The latest deadline is set to expire on September 15.
As in previous rollovers, Hungary has demanded the delisting of a number of people before Budapest will give its green light to the extension.
Some of the more hawkish member states, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, have countered that the bloc should move from a six-month extension of the sanctions to an annual decision -- a move Budapest has opposed.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his government have consistently resisted sanctions and accused Brussels of strong-arming the bloc into actions that undermine Hungary's and other member states' economies.
Hungary currently holds the bloc's six-month rotating Presidency of the European Council and has used the increased visibility to launch an uncoordinated diplomatic push that Orban described as a "peace initiative" but EU officials rejected as wholly of Budapest's own design.
EU diplomats have told RFE/RL that a compromise has been struck in which the six-month extension will remain but just two people will be delisted this time.
It was proposed that Mazepin and Prigozhina should be removed as they are both considered "weak cases" by the EU legal service that monitors the judicial aspects of Brussels’ sanctions policy.
Mazepin, a former Formula One driver and son of the Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin, earlier this year won a case in the EU’s general court to have the sanctions against him removed.
He has, however, remained listed as the EU has argued that the court ruling only referred to an earlier period of the sanctions and that Brussels since then had renewed the lists with new criteria.
Prigozhina, mother of the late Russian oligarch and Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, won a court battle last year but so far has remained the target of sanctions.
Prigozhin, long a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died along with nine other people in a mysterious plane crash in August 2023, two months after he announced a rebellion at the head of his Wagner Group, a private army, that captured parts of Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow.
The septuagenarian Prigozhina is a longtime artist and art-gallery owner.
In the spring, a similar discussion was held in Brussels in which Arkady Volozh, co-founder of the Russian Internet giant Yandex, the businessman Sergei Mndoiants, and Jozef Hambalek, a Slovak national and head of the Russian nationalist Night Wolves motorcycle club in Europe, eventually were delisted by the EU.
The next renewal of the sanctions is due in March 2025.