Russia turns 'unfriendly countries' list into private legal weapon

Russia's list of "unfriendly states", created weeks after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has quietly evolved from a diplomatic gesture into an operating legal instrument that now reaches child custody, property and private debts, Euronews reports.

The list began as a tool of foreign economic policy, covering the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland and all EU member states. Three years later, decrees and court rulings apply the designation to matters that international law treats as strictly apolitical: family disputes, vehicle registration and the payment of private debts. This autumn, import duties on spirits from listed countries rose from 20 to 35 percent, and the Kremlin has placed the Russian operations of Nestlé, Auchan, Leroy Merlin and Japan Tobacco under temporary administration — measures Dmitry Peskov has explicitly linked to the companies' home countries being on the list.

The extension to private life is more consequential. In a child custody dispute, Russia's Supreme Court refused to order a girl's return to France, reasoning partly that France appears on the list — a departure from the 1980 Hague Convention on cross-border child abduction, which Russia has ratified. The case began when Alexei Ermakov took his daughter, whose mother is a Ukrainian citizen, on holiday with her mother's consent in March 2025 and brought her to Russia a month later, arranging Russian citizenship for her. A bill now supported in the State Duma would go further, allowing vehicles stolen or illegally exported from unfriendly countries to be registered in Russia; in a separate case the Supreme Court has already ordered the Interior Ministry to register a car flagged in an international stolen-vehicles database at Canada's request.

A decree signed this autumn treats anyone who cannot prove citizenship of Russia or a friendly state — or produce a residency permit — as a person from an unfriendly country. Another allows Russian debtors to withhold payment from creditors in listed states, overriding the standard principle that contracts are settled on their merits regardless of the parties' nationality.

The result is that any European with a marriage, an inheritance or an apartment entangled with Russia now carries a sovereign risk that used to be reserved for exporters. Moscow's courts have made the point themselves: the girl's return to France was refused, in part, because her mother's country is on a list.