Pankin described this as highlighting "the structural weakness of the European bureaucracy, which has exhausted its leverage over Moscow but in order to save face can no longer halt its anti-Russian fervor or begin to reverse course."
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Pankin, has said that EU member states have exhausted their levers of pressure on Moscow, arguing that the bloc's structural weaknesses are now visible in the difficulty it faces agreeing new sectoral restrictions. In an interview with TASS published on 8 November, Pankin said it was becoming "increasingly difficult" for EU countries "to reach agreements on sectoral restrictions."
According to the TASS report, Pankin cited the measures adopted against Russia on 12 October as evidence of the trend. Those measures, he said, were not officially designated as a 22nd sanctions package. Instead, the Council of the EU managed only to expand its blacklists of individuals and entities. Pankin described this as highlighting "the structural weakness of the European bureaucracy, which has exhausted its leverage over Moscow but in order to save face can no longer halt its anti-Russian fervor or begin to reverse course."
The deputy minister added that the EU is threatening to agree a "full-fledged 22nd sanctions package in the near future," but that "when and how it will be agreed upon remains unclear." He also argued that the EU cannot fail to realise that anti-Russian sanctions are not working, and that they are causing greater damage to European economies while undermining global energy and food security. Pankin repeated Moscow's condemnation of unilateral coercive measures taken outside the UN Security Council, and said support for that position is growing among countries of the "global majority."
The remarks are a statement of the Russian government's position, delivered through a state news agency, and should be read as such. The claims that sanctions are failing and that EU leverage is exhausted are assertions by an interested party, not findings independently verified in the report. Nor does the material set out which sectoral measures were under discussion, what the October 12 measures contained beyond the expanded blacklists, or which member states are said to be resisting a fuller package. The timing and content of any 22nd package are, on Pankin's own account, unresolved.
What the interview does show is where Moscow has chosen to press its argument: not on the substance of the restrictions but on the mechanics of European decision-making. By framing the October 12 outcome as a face-saving compromise rather than a deliberate step, Pankin is inviting the conclusion that unanimity among member states is fraying. That is a claim Brussels has not answered in this report, and the absence of any EU response leaves the central assertion untested.
The wider significance lies in the signal such language sends to capitals weighing the cost of continued restrictions. If European governments are indeed finding sectoral agreement harder, the next package may be narrower and slower than its predecessors. Whether that reflects exhausted leverage, as Pankin argues, or simply the harder remaining targets after successive rounds, is not established by the material available. The report offers no figures on economic damage to EU economies, no detail on the global energy and food security effects Pankin cites, and no indication of when a decision might come.
