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According to a foreign ministry press release, Japanese authorities have removed eight Russians from their sanctions lists. Those exempted include Violetta Prigozhina, whose late son, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a revolt against the Russian Ministry of Defense in June 2023. The Japanese government also decided to lift sanctions against deceased Russian officers Oleg Tsokov and Georgy Shuvaev, along with several Russian-appointed officials from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Tokyo expanded restrictive measures against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, imposing sanctions on 29 organizations and three banks (CMR Bank, RFС Bank, and Timer Bank). Among the blacklisted individuals are:
- Pavel Marinychev, CEO of ALROSA
- Vladimir Artyakov, First Deputy Director General of Rostec
- Sergey Petrov, CEO of PSV Technologies
- Grigory Grigoryev, founder and CEO of the logistics company NOVELCO
- Igor Afanasiev, head of NPO Elektromashina
- Ruslan Bulatov, head of Testkomplekt.
The new measures will also affect organizations, including the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering, M.F. Stelmakh Polyus Research Institute, Turbina Special Design Bureau, Electromechanics Research and Production Association, and Aleksinsky Chemical Combined Plant.
In September 2024, the European Union lifted sanctions on Violetta Prigozhina and Nikita Mazepin, a car racer and the son of businessman Dmitry Mazepin.
Earlier, the EU had blacklisted Violetta Prigozhina because of her business ties with her son, calling her complicit in Russia's aggression against Ukraine. She was added to the sanctions list with the wording, “Violetta Prigozhina is the owner of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which belongs to the Concord group, founded and owned until 2019 by her son. She is associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is responsible for the deployment of Wagner Group mercenaries in Ukraine and for benefitting from large public contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. ...She has therefore supported actions and policies which undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin has been under U.S. sanctions since 2016 and EU and UK sanctions since 2020. In 2022, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan added him to their sanctions lists. One month after Wagner's march on Moscow in June 2023, the private jet carrying the late chief of the rebellious private military company crashed in Russia's Tver Region. None of the passengers or crew members survived.