Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.
I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I am drilling down on two issues: EU support for Armenia and what’s going on with EU sanctions on Russia.
Briefing #1: How The EU Plans To Help Armenia During A Crucial Year
What You Need To Know: The European Union is preparing to help Armenia counter Russian interference in its parliamentary elections slated for June by first deploying “a hybrid rapid response team” to tackle Kremlin disinformation and then, potentially, rolling out a more permanent civilian mission to the South Caucasus nation.
According to a letter seen by RFE/RL, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan asked Brussels on February 13 to dispatch a rapid response team to Yerevan.
The EU sent a similar team to Moldova during its parliamentary elections last year, consisting of roughly 20 people who worked alongside Moldovan authorities to detect and counter disinformation emanating from Russia on social media in a timely manner.
Both Brussels and Chisinau deemed the project a success and the European Union is now keen to replicate the effort in Armenia as the country faces crucial elections that Russia is expected to try to influence.
Deep Background: According to diplomatic notes from discussions in Brussels, the EU is keen to “express support for strengthening Armenia’s democratic resilience and information integrity both ahead of the June 2026 elections, and during the ongoing peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
It added that “the proposed support for Armenia should be aimed clearly at reducing and mitigating Russia’s destabilizing activities.”
There is also a request for the EU’s diplomatic corps, the EEAS, to “continue its outreach to Azerbaijan to explain the purpose of the EU’s support to Armenia and the need to avoid negatively impacting the ongoing peace process.”
Baku has previously expressed misgivings both about the nonlethal military aid the EU has started to provide to Armenia in recent years and the current EU mission to Armenia, called EUMA.
EUMA was established in 2023 and deploys around 225 personnel along Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, where they patrol the Armenian side of the frontier to help build confidence on the ground.
A potential new EU mission would overlap with EUMA, whose mandate ends in early 2027. But the new mission would be more focused on hybrid threats, dealing with similar issues as the potential hybrid response team, with one diplomatic note describing its role as “safeguarding the integrity of the election process, possibly closely followed by a constitutional referendum.”
According to several EU diplomats that RFE/RL has been in touch with, the idea is to get the mission up and running by the time of the EU-Armenia summit in Yerevan on May 4. That means that some sort of decision should be taken during March.
Drilling Down
- Yerevan already requested such a mission in December 2025, but getting it off the ground is not entirely straightforward.
- Two decisions are needed by EU member states -- one to technically establish it and one to actually launch it. And while no one yet has voiced any misgivings, diplomats RFE/RL has been in contact with point out that Armenia doesn’t have the same European and international support as Moldova, which is an official candidate country looking to join the bloc as early as this decade.
- Hungary has previously blocked EU decisions related to support for Yerevan, often arguing in Brussels that Azerbaijan should be given whatever Armenia is granted.
- EU officials have noted that if “equal treatment” is requested by either Baku or other EU member states, parallel support actions for Azerbaijan could be considered even though few believe that the country would be interested in hosting a similar EU mission.
- There is also hope in EU corridors that Azerbaijan can be more positively inclined toward a new mission in Armenia as it would be linked to supporting the US-led peace process and a normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the first instance, and potentially even ensure better relations between Armenia and Turkey going forward.
- Another potential stumbling block could be financing. Several diplomats have pointed out that the EU budget is stretched as Brussels is also looking to extend or establish other missions in places such as Egypt, Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon.
- There is hope, however, that a possible new Armenia mission would have a “lean footprint” with a core team of just a few experts and most of the other mission members transferred from EUMA acting as support staff.
Briefing #2: What Now For The EU Sanctions Package On Russia?
What You Need To Know: EU foreign ministers failed to agree on fresh sanctions on Russia when they met in Brussels on February 23.
It had been widely expected that these would be green-lighted to coincide with the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, but Hungary and Slovakia vetoed the entire package over something unrelated -- the disruption of deliveries of Russian oil to the two landlocked Central European countries via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline.
On top of that, Hungary is also blocking the 90-billion-euro loan ($106 billion) to Ukraine that was tentatively agreed by EU leaders in December.
EU diplomats that RFE/RL has spoken to hope that the sanctions will be agreed soon, especially as they expect both Budapest and Bratislava to have enough oil to see out both winter and spring. They also expect approval because the text of the sanctions package has more or less been agreed.
Deep Background: The main issue is a proposal to introduce a maritime service ban on all Russian oil products which would prevent EU economic operators from providing services to any vessel transporting these products from Russian ports.
This would do away with the current oil price cap -- imposed by the Group of Seven (G7) -- by completely stopping EU vessels from transporting Russian oil while non-EU boats could still continue but would not be able to rely on EU port services or insurance.
The main obstacle, however, has been that EU states with a strong maritime sector, such as Greece and Malta, wanted an agreement at G7-level before a full EU ban takes place.
In the draft sanctions text, seen by RFE/RL, there is something of a compromise as it reads that “the [European] Council should be informed as soon as possible of any agreement of the Price Cap Coalition, and the Council should decide, based on a proposal from the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, that the oil price cap is no longer applicable, with the result that a full ban on maritime services related to Russian crude oil and petroleum products would enter into force.”
The “Price Cap Coalition” mentioned is not a formal international forum like the G7. Instead, it is an informal group consisting of the G7 countries, all EU member states, and Australia.
The EU has previously worked on lowering the oil cap with only some members of the coalition and the thinking in Brussels is that a number of non-EU countries will be ready to get rid of the cap altogether if the EU indicates that it will move.
Drilling Down
- On top of the maritime ban, an additional 45 shadow fleet vessels will be targeted, taking the number of boats that can no longer be serviced in EU ports to nearly 700.
- Sanctions will also be levied on Russian icebreakers, with Brussels believing that such boats are instrumental in oil and gas exports from northernmost Russia.
- The package also includes import restrictions on Russian and Belarusian vulcanized rubber, tanned animal hides, scrap steel, and some minerals. An EU export ban is also being imposed on the two countries for the same products as well as industrial tractors.
- The EU broadcast ban of Russian media such as RT and Sputnik, which has been in place since 2022, will now be extended to other outlets mirroring their content.
- While most big Russian banks have already been targeted, this raft of measures also includes 20 smaller, regional financial institutions in the country. A ban on engaging with the “digital ruble,” which still isn’t fully functional but is expected to become a common method of payment for Russia’s central bank, has also been included in the sanctions package.
- Furthermore, the new package is introducing more restrictive measures than previous rounds of sanctions against other countries beyond Belarus and Russia. Numerous companies from China, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates will be under tighter export restrictions from the EU, and some Chinese, Kazakh, and Uzbek firms will have their assets in the EU frozen.
- For the first time ever, the EU is also triggering its anti-circumvention tool (ACT) prohibiting EU companies from exporting Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines and radio equipment to Kyrgyzstan -- items that can be used in the war, notably for drones.
- This comes after Brussels noted an almost 800 percent increase in exports of these products from the bloc to the Central Asian country in 2025 and that exports from Kyrgyzstan to Russia for the same period shot up by 1,200 percent.
- The Georgian port of Kulevi has also been slapped with a transaction ban, together with a port in Indonesia, for having aided the Russian shadow fleet by letting it operate from there, according to the EU.
- Azerbaijan’s Yelo Bank has been targeted for aiding Russian circumvention and two Kyrgyz banks have been sanctioned for this as well. However, three Tajik banks have been removed from a previous blacklist from late last year after it was shown that they no longer engage in sanctions circumvention.
- An Armenian bank, OJSC Unibank, was slated for sanctions in an early draft seen by RFE/RL but has since been dropped from the proposal after Yerevan proved to Brussels that it doesn’t engage in such transactions with Russia.
Looking Ahead
This week is really about the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The European Parliament will have an extra plenary session, which will be addressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy via videolink, and the chamber will also pass a nonbinding resolution calling for more sanctions on Moscow and more arms deliveries to Ukraine.
The EU’s top officials, Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, are in Kyiv and will have “a coalition of the willing” meeting in the Ukrainian capital alongside Zelenskyy and a number of other European leaders.
That's all for this week!
I am off next week so the next issue will come on March 10.
Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at Rikard Jozwiak.
Until next time,
Rikard Jozwiak
If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition subscribe here .
