The Legal Dynamics of Restrictive Measures Imposed by the Union against Russia

From the sieges of ancient fortresses—such as Homer’s legendary Troy or Caesar’s campaign at Alesia, exemplifying the discipline the ancient Greeks termed Polykleitos—to the Ottoman blockade of Constantinople and, subsequently, Napoleon’s continental blockade of British trade; from the sugar boycotts in the French Antilles and Gandhi’s resistance to the salt tax, to contemporary embargoes imposed by the United States against communist Cuba or Iraq, the history of international sanctions illustrates a complex and heterogeneous field of debate. Within this field, ethical, legal, and geostrategic considerations intersect in distinctive ways, each asserting its own principles and delimiting its own permissible scope of action. Global developments in recent years reveal both the multipolar world we live in and the ability of law to serve as the “sweet weapon” of economic warfare, employed in response to hostile behavior, political crises, or armed aggression. The European sanctions against the Russian Federation were implemented following the annexation, in February 2014, of the Crimean Peninsula, and after the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the material and personal scope of the restrictions grew considerably; no fewer than 18 “packages” of economic and individual sanctions (the latest on 18 July 2025) have been adopted to diminish the Kremlin’s capacity to finance the war. The restrictions adopted (reminiscent of U.S. secondary sanctions) also broaden the debate regarding a form of extraterritoriality of European sanctions, despite the Union’s traditional policy of denouncing the extraterritorial effects of sanctions imposed by third countries. Russia’s serious breach of peremptory norms of general interest (through military aggression against the territorial integrity and independence of a sovereign state and through flagrant violations of human rights), however, legitimises this approach.