Moscow is taking the EU to court over the sanctions slapped on some of its largest companies, in a sign of the pain their exclusion from global capital markets is inflicting on the Russian economy.
Rosneft, the state oil company, and Arkady Rotenberg, a long-time friend and former judo sparring partner of President Vladimir Putin, have both launched legal challenges to the sanctions, imposed over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The EU bans, together with similar measures adopted by the US, have all but frozen Russian companies and banks out of western capital markets, at a time when they have to refinance more than $130bn of foreign debt due for redemption by the end of 2015.