David vs Goliath: Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has criticised the EU for “cherry-picking” sanctions on Moscow in a move he says “normalises Russia”, after his small Baltic nation showed its teeth yesterday while opposing a push to remove two oligarchs from the EU’s blacklist.
Reminder: EU heavyweight France had stunned EU diplomats by pushing to remove Uzbek-Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov from the sanctions list as part of a prisoner release deal with Azerbaijan. Slovakia had also been lobbying to remove a second businessman, Mikhail Fridman, from the list.
