The European Union on September 13 removed Violetta Prigozhina, the 85-year-old mother of the late leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, along with several other Russians from its sanctions list.
The European Union has imposed asset freezes and visa bans on 2,300 people and entities since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The EU's move to remove Prigozhina from the sanctions list was based on a decision by the EU General Court made in March 2023.
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The EU's second-highest court ruled at the time that Prigozhina's inclusion was based only on her family connection with Prigozhin, which the court said was insufficient proof she was complicit in her son's role in the Ukraine war.
The EU, the court said then, placed Prigozhina on the sanctions list on the grounds that she was the owner of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, part of the Concord group founded and owned until 2019 by her son, and also owned other business interests with links to her son.
The court also said it had established that Prigozhina, although owning shares in Concord, has not been the owner of the company since 2017. The EU also failed to prove that Prigozhina owned other ventures linked to her son when the sanctions were adopted.
Prigozhina was added to the EU's Ukraine sanctions list on February 23, 2022, one day before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, along with members of the Russian government, banks, businesspeople, and lawmakers.
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 as the head of the Wagner Group, a private army that played a major role in Russia's advance into Ukraine.