EU Weighs Terror Listing for Russia's GRU as It Prepares More Sanctions

The European Union is in the early stages of examining whether it could place the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, on its list of terrorist organizations. A recent series of hybrid attacks on member states, many of them directly or indirectly tied to the GRU, has led diplomats and lawyers to study first whether such a step is legally possible and then whether there is enough political will in Brussels.

The legal question is being handled with care because of a precedent set in early January, when the bloc listed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Terror designations had previously been reserved for clear non-state actors such as Hamas or Al-Qaeda. The IRGC listing opened the way to targeting a formal arm of a sovereign state and established the idea of state-sponsored terrorism in EU law. Such a designation must rest on an earlier court decision in an EU member state or a trusted third country. For the IRGC, that was a 2023 ruling by the Dusseldorf higher regional court, which found the group had planned and carried out an attempted arson attack on a synagogue in the German city of Bochum a year earlier.

A comparable ruling on the GRU may be hard to find. National prosecutors have charged GRU officers, often in absentia, with offenses such as espionage or attempted murder, but not terrorism. European diplomats familiar with the issue say prosecutors are bound by the definitions in their national penal codes. Czech prosecutors named two GRU officers over the 2014 Vrbetice ammunition depot explosions, but Czech law does not permit a full trial while the suspects remain in Russia. In the 2018 Salisbury Novichok poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, GRU agents were charged in absentia with attempted murder and chemical weapons use.

Lithuania offers the two most promising openings. In 2025, its prosecutors charged 15 people with terrorism over a 2024 plot in which incendiary devices meant for cargo planes bound for the United States and Canada caught fire in warehouses in Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom. Those charged were GRU-recruited proxies rather than GRU officers, so it is unclear whether the link is strong enough. A separate ongoing trial involves six foreign nationals accused of planning a September 2024 arson attack on a private military supplier in Siauliai that supports Ukraine. The suspects may also be proxies, but the alleged GRU connection is described as strong.

Politics may prove as difficult as law. A listing requires unanimity among the 27 member states, and some may worry that Moscow would retaliate against European embassies, missions or culture houses still operating in Russia. Some Brussels officials argue the GRU's existing sanctions, which freeze its assets in the bloc and bar its leadership from entering, are enough. More hawkish states counter that a terror listing would cover the whole institution and every officer, closing a loophole for individuals not yet sanctioned. They add that it would help European authorities prosecute local proxy networks, ease EU-wide counterterrorism arrest warrants and strengthen cross-border intelligence tracking.

Meanwhile, the EU is continuing its rolling sanctions on Russia. Having moved away from large sectoral packages, it now adds visa bans and asset freezes monthly. On October 12, foreign ministers approved the blacklisting of 1,600 new names, largely from Russia's military industry, bringing the total sanctioned since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine to more than 4,600. Ministers meet again on November 16, and a new proposal seen by RFE/RL was presented to ambassadors on October 21. It names 12 individuals and 105 companies.

The proposal includes more prominent figures than the last round. Among them is Tatyana Kim, founder and CEO of Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, which the text says functions as a supply network for the Russian military and has a strategic partnership with the EU-listed VTB Bank. Also named are Aleksandr Chachava, owner of the holding company that has the largest stake in e-commerce firm Ozon, and billionaire Ruslan Baysarov, chairman of the construction firm BTS-Most. Sergei Matvienko, a businessman and son of Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matvienko, is proposed over his stake in a major real-estate developer and ownership of a construction company.

Many listed entities are outside Russia. Proposed targets include smaller and regional Russian banks, oil refinery owners, several United Arab Emirates companies that manage vessels engaged in what the EU calls irregular and high-risk shipping, two firms registered in the Seychelles, and Hong Kong-based Chinese companies that buy Russian oil or own already sanctioned tankers.

Looking ahead, an EU-Canada summit takes place in Montreal on October 29 and 30. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier floated an undefined idea of "associate membership" for Canada, which may gain little traction. Canada could instead join the Erasmus student mobility program and the Galileo satellite navigation system.