“Mr Shvidler would like to make it clear that, like the rest of us in Europe, he is hoping and praying for peace and an end to the senseless violence in Ukraine. We all hope that the war can be brought to an immediate end.”
“These sanctions are not an end in themselves. They are one element of a broader strategy to achieve the UK’s foreign policy goals to change the Russian Government’s policy towards Ukraine. Direct lobbying alone has not proved sufficient. The UK is therefore combining sanctions with diplomatic measures, individual visa denials or blocking Russian membership of the G8, cancelling the annual EU-Russia Summit, and reducing access to European Bank for Reconstruction and Development project funding, as well as bilateral lobbying, lobbying through international frameworks, and supporting UN resolutions. The policy intention is that sanctions on Russia will remain in place until the UK Government is assured that Russia has ended its illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol; withdrawn from eastern Ukraine and is no longer carrying out actions that undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Fulfilling the Minsk Agreements would deliver the purpose of the sanctions regime. We will continue to monitor the position on the ground, including via the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. The UK will continue to coordinate with international partners, including on the future of the sanctions regime.”
“30. So far … as the traditional treatment of foreign policy or national security decisions depends on the non‐justiciability of the Crown's prerogative to conduct the United Kingdom's foreign relations or of measures taken in the interests of national security, it cannot apply in cases where a scrutiny of such decisions is necessary in order to adjudicate on a complaint that Convention rights have been infringed. In these fields of law, nothing which is relevant can be a “forbidden area” (Lord Phillips MR's phrase in Abbasi), although complaints about the substance as opposed to the application of British foreign policy may well be met by the response that it is not relevant: R (Gentle) v Prime Minister[2008] AC 1356 , paras 24‐25 (Lord Hope of Craighead)… I would accept that when it comes to reviewing the compatibility of executive decisions with the Convention, there can be no absolute constitutional bar to any inquiry which is both relevant and necessary to enable the court to adjudicate. … 34. Various expressions have been used in the case law to describe the quality of the judicial scrutiny called for when considering the proportionality of an interference with a Convention right: “heightened”, “anxious”, “exacting”, and so on... But the legal principle is clear enough. The court must test the adequacy of the factual basis claimed for the decision: is it sufficiently robust having regard to the interference with Convention rights which is involved? It must consider whether the professed objective can be said to be necessary, in the sense that it reflects a pressing social need. It must review the rationality of the supposed connection between the objective and the means employed: is it capable of contributing systematically to the desired objective, or its impact on the objective arbitrary? The court must consider whether some less onerous alternative would have been available without unreasonably impairing the objective. The court is the ultimate arbiter of the appropriate balance between two incommensurate values: the Convention rights engaged and the interests of the community relied on to justify interfering with it. But the court is not usually concerned with remaking the decision‐maker's assessment of the evidence if it was an assessment reasonably open to her. Nor, on a matter dependent on a judgment capable of yielding more than one answer, is the court concerned with remaking the judgment of the decision‐maker about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the course selected, or of pure policy choices (eg do we wish to engage with Iran at all?). The court does not make the substantive decision in place of the executive. On all of these matters, in determining what weight to give to the evidence, the court is entitled to attach special weight to the judgments and assessments of a primary decision‐maker with special institutional competence.”
“… The designation of Shvidler is likely to contribute to achieving the purposes of the sanctions regime in at least the following ways: (i) it sends a strong political message to the designated person, the Government of Russia and the international community that the UK does not accept acts which destabilise Ukraine or undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine; (ii) it may incentivise the Government of Russia to change its behaviour, and to cease the acts set out in (i); and (iii) it signals the UK’s support for the full implementation of Russia’s international obligations and commitments, including the UN Charter, 1975 Helsinki Final Act, 2014 and 2015 Minsk Protocols and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukraine.”
“I accept (counsel for the Secretary of State’s analysis) that the Secretary of State need not demonstrate the efficacy of each individual detention (or designation) decision in order to maintain a sanctions measure. Certainly, it would be difficult to demonstrate that any one decision would have a desired foreign policy outcome.”