Oleksandr Lytvynenko: Adoption of the 18th EU sanctions package and a new package of sanctions from the US Congress is an important tool to put pressure on Russia

Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, on June 27, 2025, took part in the panel discussion “Sanctions under pressure: challenges in stopping the use of foreign technologies by terrorist regimes” within the framework of the Fair Play conference on the introduction of additional sanctions against Russia, organized by the Office of the President of Ukraine.

In his speech, Oleksandr Lytvynenko emphasized that “in order to effectively counter Russia's militaristic policy, we should focus on painstakingly identifying and preventing the use of every loophole in the system of sanctions pressure on the aggressor state.”

First of all, he emphasized, it is necessary to focus on the following areas: blocking Russia's imports of means of production (in particular, machine tools) for modernization and production expansion; restricting access of Russian military-industrial complex enterprises to the critical foreign-made electronic component base; blocking the supply of critical raw materials for the production of weapons (rare earth metals).

The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine also identified a separate direction of strengthening sanctions pressure on the Russian military-industrial complex in order to deprive it of financial and technological resources to continue the war, in particular by: promoting the adoption of the 18th EU sanctions package and a new package of sanctions from the US Congress; imposing sanctions against companies that have helped Russia establish legal ways to provide the country's military-industrial complex and industry with everything it needs to continue the war.

Toughening sanctions against the financial sector of the Russian Federation, including non-sanctioned banks, imposing sanctions on Russian cryptocurrency exchanges to stop oil trade settlements bypassing sanctions, accelerating the EU's decision to confiscate frozen assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to finance Ukraine's needs are a number of other mechanisms to influence the financial capacity of the aggressor state, Oleksandr Lytvynenko noted in his speech at the conference.

Summing up, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine noted the need to strengthen responsibility for circumventing sanctions by third countries and further synchronize the sanctions regimes of Ukraine and other democratic states.