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What the EU's Crimean bridge sanctions signalled
Summary
A look back at the sanctions the EU imposed on six Russian companies building the Crimean bridge, reported in the days around 1 August 2018.
What did the European Union intend when it targeted the builders of the bridge linking Russia to Crimea? The question frames the news reported in the final days before 1 August 2018, when the EU imposed sanctions on six Russian companies involved in constructing the crossing, as reported on 31 July 2018.
The target was the project, not only the state
The measure was aimed at companies rather than at Russia's government as a whole. The bridge connects mainland Russia to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine. The sanctions fell within the wider framework of Russia–European Union relations, and they placed the commercial participants in the construction on notice.
The background explains why Kyiv and its partners cared about the project. In February and March 2014, Russia invaded Crimea, occupied it and then annexed it after a referendum that was illegitimate. The annexation came amid the uncertainty that followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. A bridge tying the peninsula to Russian territory was therefore a physical addition to an annexation that the EU had not accepted.
A busy news week in the region
The sanctions were not the only regional story at the time. On 31 July 2018, a court decision stripped the Russian language of its regional-language status in Mykolaiv Oblast. Separately, on 30 July 2018, Georgia's Constitutional Court legalised cannabis for recreational use following a campaign led by the politician Zurab Japaridze. Georgia became the first former Soviet republic to legalise the drug fully, while it was also decriminalised in Russia, Ukraine and Estonia.
These items concern different matters, and nothing in the reports links them. Still, taken together they show a region in which questions of language, law and territory were being settled in different ways in different capitals.
What the sanctions amounted to
The reported facts show a narrow, company-level step. They do not describe the size of the penalties or any immediate effect on construction. What they do establish is that by 1 August 2018 the EU had chosen to attach consequences to firms that were building a link to annexed Crimea.
