The European Union is expected to approve a new round of sanctions against Russia on Monday, 16 November, targeting banks, the shadow fleet moving Russian oil and people accused of hybrid warfare, France's minister for European affairs said on Thursday.

Benjamin Haddad told French television channel LCI that the measures would cover 150 additional entities, including 50 banks, and that France had proposed most of the names to be added. "We will continue to put economic pressure on Russia and of course support Ukraine," he said, according to Reuters.

The precise total is not yet settled in public. EU diplomats told Reuters on Wednesday that the bloc's ambassadors had agreed on 145 listings, a slightly lower figure than the one Haddad gave on television. That breakdown, reported by Reuters and carried by Global Banking and Finance, puts 113 people and entities under the EU's main sanctions regime for undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity, including 50 Russian banks, companies linked to the shadow fleet, energy firms and business leaders. A further 31 listings fall under the regime covering hybrid activities and foreign information manipulation, and one more under the bloc's cyberattack sanctions.

What happens on Monday

EU foreign ministers are expected to adopt the listings formally at their meeting on Monday. The measures would then take legal effect only once they are published in the EU's Official Journal, the step that turns a political agreement into enforceable law.

The package is the latest in a long series of EU measures since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and it comes as the United States, Russia and Ukraine hold talks in Abu Dhabi on ending the war. European governments have argued that economic pressure must continue alongside diplomacy, and that any settlement must not be agreed over the heads of Kyiv and its European allies.

Russia bans French journalists and MPs

Haddad also used the interview to condemn Russia's decision on Wednesday to ban two French journalists and two French lawmakers from entering the country. Those barred are Le Monde reporter Ariane Chemin, freelance journalist and former Moscow correspondent Paul Gogo, and lawmakers Sacha Houlie and Arthur Delaporte.

"This is intimidation. France will not be intimidated," Haddad said. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X that the Kremlin was presenting the ban as a response to France's expulsion in July of Xenia Fedorova, a former chief of RT France whom French authorities accused of spreading Russian misinformation, and that this confirmed her ties to the Russian authorities.

The new EU Russia sanctions on Monday will be watched for whether the final published list matches the 145 listings agreed by ambassadors or the 150 figure given by Haddad, and for how far the measures reach into the networks that move Russian oil and money. Sources: Reuters; Global Banking and Finance.