The foreign ministers of the European Union have greenlighted a new package of sanctions aimed at three individuals and four entities related to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as its growing military and economic cooperation with Russia, which includes the supply of North Korean weaponry to Moscow for use in the war in Ukraine.
With these additional measures, the Twenty-Seven intend to curb activities that favor the development of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other weapons of mass destruction by Pyongyang, in addition to combating practices designed to evade the sanctions imposed by the United Nations, as they stated in a communiqué following their meeting this Monday in Luxembourg.
Among the new targets of the sanctions is Ri Song Jin, a researcher at the North Korean National Aerospace Administration and an official of the North Korean General Missile Bureau, who has been sent to Russia as a technician to support the use of North Korean missiles by Russian forces.
The EU has also added the Russian real estate developer Samolet Group and its CEO, Anna Nikolaevna Akinshina, to its blacklist for employing North Korean labor in construction projects in Vladivostok.
Likewise, the sanctions also target Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sokolov, founder and president of the Russian business group Black Horse, for promoting commercial and industrial cooperation projects with North Korea, including a joint industrial investment initiative in the Russian region of Primorie.
The individuals and entities identified by these decisions will be subject to asset freezing and a prohibition on receiving funds or economic resources from European operators, while individuals will also be banned from entering and transiting through the territory of the European Union.
Following these new additions, the list of those sanctioned by the EU linked to North Korea now totals 80 individuals and 25 entities, in addition to the restrictive measures agreed upon by the United Nations Security Council and incorporated into the community legal framework.