[Sanctions-Discuss] Discuss Digest, Vol 1, Issue 3

[Bill Woodcock]

> On Mar 27, 2022, at 1:34 PM, J Scott Marcus <scott at scottmarcus.com> wrote:
> Seems very reasonable to me. But I could also see an argument for blocking both Sputnik and RT in the first wave, which still makes for a small enough test list.

Ok, seems reasonable.  Others want to chime in on this, and suggest a few other organizations and individuals for this experimental round?

Ordinarily, of course, we’d be going at this the other way around…  Governmentally-defined sanctions would be our input, and we’d be considering whether they seem reasonable for Internet implementation, rather than us picking from a menu of governmentally-defined entities based on our convenience or predilections. In any event, our next step after defining the experimental list, is to document clearly what the governmental sources and provided information are.

So, here’s the EU source:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L:2022:065:FULL&from=EN

ANNEX XV
LIST OF LEGAL PERSONS, ENTITIES OR BODIES REFERRED TO IN ARTICLE 2F
RT- Russia Today English
RT- Russia Today UK
RT - Russia Today Germany
RT - Russia Today France
RT- Russia Today Spanish
Sputnik

…Which actually isn’t very detailed. No postal addresses, no alternate-language representations, no corporation numbers.

As of March 18, the Norwegian government had decided to adopt other EU sanctions BUT NOT those against RT and Sputnik:

https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/russia_sanctions/id2904511/

As of March 25, the Swiss government had decided to adopt other EU sanctions BUT NOT those against RT and Sputnik:

https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12969462-la-suisse-adopte-de-nouvelles-sanctions-mais-ninterdit-pas-russia-today-et-sputnik.html

As of March 25, the Australian government sanctioned Russia Today (and three other Russian propaganda outlets):

https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/marise-payne/media-release/australia-places-additional-sanctions-russia-and-belarus

…but I still need to track down the actual legislation.

As of March 16, the Canadian broadcast regulator sanctioned Russia Today:

https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2022/2022-68.pdf

The US State Department published this report back in January:

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Kremlin-Funded-Media_January_update-19.pdf

…but as of today, neither RT nor Sputnik appear in the US sanctions list:

https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/ssi/ssilist.txt

Likewise, neither RT nor Sputnik appear in the UK sanctions list:

https://ofsistorage.blob.core.windows.net/publishlive/UKSL/UKSanctionsList.html

So either we use this mixed outcome as input to a debate on whether EU/AU/CA constitutes a sufficient quorum, in the absence of US/UK/NO/CH/others, or we go back and see if there are other entities that represent a broader consensus among governments.

                                -Bill

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