Austria agreed to unblock sanctions against Russia after Ukraine removed Austrian bank Raiffeisen from the list of international war sponsors

Austria will unblock the 12th sanctions package against Russia.

Rikard Jozwiak, a Brussels-based correspondent for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, writes about this.

"Sanctions should now be formally adopted this coming week," Jozwiak wrote in his X.

Raiffeisen Bank has been operating in Russia since 1996 and is included in the list of systemically important banks in Russia. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the bank remained in Russia. Also, it recognised the illegal armed groups of the "DPR" and "LPR" in the temporarily occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

However, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention of Ukraine removed the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank from its website's list of international war sponsors. This was one of the requirements to unblock the adoption of the new sanctions package.

It will be recalled that on December 16, Austria blocked the 12th package of EU sanctions against Russia, demanding that Ukraine remove Raiffeisen from the list of war sponsors.

Hungary put similar pressure on Ukraine when adopting the 11th sanctions package. At that time, the Ukrainian side was required to remove the Hungarian OTP bank from the list of war sponsors.

Ukraine did remove the bank from the list. After that, Hungary demanded guarantees that the bank would not be returned to the list.