EU court overturns 2024 and 2025 sanctions decisions against former Russian senator Oleg Tkach (but he remains on the sanctions list)
The General Court of the European Union annulled the Council of the EU’s September 2024 and September 2025 decisions to keep former Federation Council member Oleg Tkach on the sanctions list. An entry for the ruling is posted on the court’s website.
The EU initially imposed sanctions on Tkach in March 2022 because, as a Federation Council member, he had voted to ratify the treaty “on friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance between the Russian Federation and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.”
The court ruled that Tkach’s vote had provided sufficient grounds to impose sanctions on him but was not enough to keep him on the list in subsequent years.
The court concluded that Tkach had “withdrawn from Russian political life”: He did not seek reelection in September 2022 and had also acquired “citizenship in two other countries,” which disqualified him from holding political office in Russia.
The court also rejected the Council’s argument that the former senator had not publicly condemned the invasion of Ukraine. The ruling said his failure to do so could not automatically be taken as a sign of support, particularly given the harsh repression of anti-war views.
The Council also cited Tkach’s ties to the publishing company Olma Media Group, which he founded in 1991, as grounds for extending the sanctions. The group included the publisher Prosveshcheniye, which helped promote anti-Ukrainian narratives through school textbooks.
The Council maintained that although Tkach had formally stepped away from managing the company long ago, he continued to exert influence over it through a trust fund and entities linked to his family. The court rejected this argument because the Council had failed to explain Tkach’s specific role in the company. The court also said VEB.RF, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and Sberbank had controlled a 75% stake in Prosveshcheniye since 2021.
The court therefore found that the grounds cited in the Council’s September 2024 and September 2025 decisions did not justify keeping Tkach on the sanctions list.
Tkach remains on the EU sanctions list under a March 14, 2026, Council decision. He has already filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn that extension, but the court has not yet ruled on the case. The Council’s September 22, 2026, decision lifting sanctions on billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman does not mention Tkach.
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