A Russian dream is to steal a toilet and die!!! [Sanitary ware added to EU sanctions]

EU is renewing a ban on selling toilets [along with many other items] to Russia on the war anniversary. 

EU ambassadors negotiating the next round of sanctions in Brussels on Wednesday (15 February) pored over a 146-page list of items export bans to Russia. The main thrust of the trade embargo, worth another €11bn a year, is to stop sales of

• HIGH-TECH ITEMS [THAT RUSSIAN WEAPONS SYSTEMS WILL USE] AND
• TOILETS!!!!

Also included at this time are

• EIGHT [X8] IRANIAN FIRMS due to a dual-use export ban for supplying AERIAL VEHICLES (UAV), commonly known as a drone, to Russia

TOILETS!!!!

Toilets were among items first banned last year — and now feature in the renewed list designed to enter into force by 24 February, the war's first anniversary.

And they are on the new list that includes

1. "Bidets,
2. Lavatory pans,
3. Flushing cisterns and
4. Similar sanitary ware",

Toilets symbolised how Russian president Vladimir Putin's 24-year rule had done nothing to improve Russian people's lives because one in five Russian homes still don't have them.

So we now see Russians looting them, first in Georgia in 2008 and now in Ukraine —

• "Let them take the toilet bowls — they'll need them on the road — and go back home," Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky said in a speech in January.
• "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.

OTHER STUFF

IRANIAN COMPANIES

It also designates — for the first time—

• Eight Iranian firms for supplying DUAL USE UAVs to Russia.

The companies are

1. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force,
2. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research,
3. The Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization,
4. Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company,
5. Paravar Pars Company,
6. Qods Aviation Industries,
7. Shahed Aviation Industries, and
8. Concern Morinformsystem–Agat.

CONCLUSION

But for all the toilet humour [!!] it might prompt 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.

It also asks why the EU has continued to export potential weapons components for the past 12 months of the war.

One EU diplomat said this was because Ukrainians had captured Russian weapons, broken them open, and told their EU allies what was inside.

SOURCE

https://euobserver.com/world/156725?utm_source=euobs&utm_medium=email