{"id":40849,"date":"2023-02-16T07:13:37","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T08:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=40849"},"modified":"2023-02-16T08:37:20","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T08:37:20","slug":"eu-to-ban-sales-of-toilets-to-russia-on-war-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2023\/02\/16\/eu-to-ban-sales-of-toilets-to-russia-on-war-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"EU to ban sales of toilets to Russia on war anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New EU sanctions meant to degrade Russia’s war machine include symbolic items, while letting strategic industries off the hook.<\/p>\n

EU ambassadors negotiating the next round of sanctions in Brussels on Wednesday (15 February) pored over a 146-page long list of items that will no longer be exported to Russia.<\/p>\n

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The main thrust of the trade embargo, worth \u20ac11bn a year, is to stop sales of high-tech items that can be used in Russian weapons systems.<\/p>\n

This includes electronics, lasers, radio equipment, software, avionics, marine cameras, and rare-earth minerals, according to documents seen by EUobserver.<\/p>\n

The list drills into minutiae, specifying items such as “molecular beam epitaxial growth equipment” (used in nanotechnology) and “4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine” (a precursor for making nerve toxins).<\/p>\n

It also designates \u2014 for the first time ever \u2014 eight Iranian firms to be added to the dual-use export ban for supplying UAVs to Russia.<\/p>\n

The companies are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research, the Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization, Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company, Paravar Pars Company, Qods Aviation Industries, Shahed Aviation Industries, and Concern Morinformsystem\u2013Agat.<\/p>\n

Another part of the new trade ban is meant to strike at Russia’s industrial capacity more broadly speaking.<\/p>\n

This miscellaneous list includes “bidets, lavatory pans, flushing cisterns and similar sanitary ware”, as well as LEDs, hemp yarn, fork-lift trucks, mail-sorting machines, chimney pots, bricks, tyres, and even “pen nibs and nib points”.<\/p>\n

Toilets became a symbol of how Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule has done nothing to improve Russian people’s lives when Russian soldiers began looting them, first in Georgia in 2008, and now in Ukraine \u2014 because one in five Russian homes still don’t have them.<\/p>\n

“Let them take the toilet bowls \u2014 they’ll need them on the road \u2014 and go back home,” Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky said in a speech in January.<\/p>\n

“You know they [Russians] used to talk about their biggest dream, to see Paris and die … their dream now is to steal a toilet and die,” he also said last April.<\/p>\n

The EU sanctions are designed to enter into force by 24 February \u2014 the first anniversary of the war.<\/p>\n

But the inclusion of symbolic items and obscure technology comes at the same time as Russia’s diamond and nuclear industries are being left off the hook yet again, risking a PR blowback.<\/p>\n

It also invites the question why the EU has continued to export potential weapons components for the past 12 months of war.<\/p>\n

One EU diplomat said this was because Ukrainians had captured Russian weapons, broken them open, and told their EU allies what was inside.<\/p>\n