💬 On October 12, information emerged that the EU Council had approved yet another round of illegitimate sanctions against Russia.

EU representatives bravuraly declared that this was the latest largest single expansion of sanctions lists, adding 826 Russian organizations and 743 individuals. Furthermore, separate legislative acts (as they call their illegitimate activity) also extended restrictions to 77 Russian citizens in connection with the organization of elections... [to the State Duma of the Russian Federation].

Our own elections, on our own territory!

In this context, we note that residents of Crimea, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions decided to join Russia in March 2014 and September 2022.

Any attempts to portray the elections in these regions as illegitimate are groundless. Since then, they have participated in electoral processes, running for office, and voting, which is their constitutional right. The European Union has neither the legal nor the moral right to interfere in these processes, condemn them, or impose any restrictions.

At the same time, the extension of restrictions to such a significant number of individuals and legal entities once again demonstrates the structural impotence of Brussels, which has exhausted its leverage over our country.

❓ Why doesn't the EU impose sanctions on Bankovaya for the failure to hold elections in Ukraine? <...> They're always concerned about who holds elections where and how, if they see any discrepancies, in their view, with their incomprehensible standards. <...>

EU member states are finding it increasingly difficult to agree on sectoral restrictions, which have a much greater impact on their own national economies and other spheres.Therefore, the "large-scale" anti-Russian measures adopted this week turned out to be a simple bureaucratic expansion of "blacklists" based on extremely broad wording.

Now they're threatening us with a "full-fledged" 22nd sanctions package, which the EU is currently working on. I believe they're only working on this one, because they apparently haven't worked on anything else: everything else is crumbling before our eyes. Then, apparently, they'll threaten a 23rd and 24th package.

We understand that the anti-Russian fervor of the European bureaucracy is far from exhausted, and common sense in Brussels has been exhausted. It has been suppressed by sanctions.

Our position remains unchanged: we strongly condemn any unilateral coercive measures taken in circumvention of the UN Security Council. It is gratifying that more and more countries of the global majority support our approach.

But the icing on the cake was the Warsaw Security Forum and the statement by the EU Special Envoy for Sanctions, David O'Sullivan: "The problem with our sanctions is that they do not have a UN mandate. Therefore, most countries in the world do not consider it necessary to comply with them."

Curtain falls.