Switzerland (WBF) adopts interim tranche of EU 18th sanctions package against Russia — lowered oil price cap, transport/port and financial controls

Mechanism

Switzerland does not autonomously design its Russia-sanctions perimeter; it mirrors the EU regime via the Ordinance on Measures in Connection with the Situation in Ukraine, updated by successive amendment decrees published in the Amtliche Sammlung (AS). Most amendments run through the full Federal Council. Here, WBF used delegated competence to move an interim tranche of the EU's 18 July 2025 18th-package measures into force on 12 August 2025 — ahead of the fuller Federal Council adoption that followed on 29 October 2025 (2025-10-29-switzerland-18th-eu-sanctions-package-russia-belarus), which explicitly notes this WBF action as its precursor. The core lever is the crude-oil price cap: the EU's 18th package cut the cap from USD 60 to USD 47.6/bbl with a dynamic re-indexing mechanism (see the EU action this responds to); Switzerland's Annex 28 price table was updated in lockstep to keep Swiss-domiciled trade financing, insurance and shipping services from becoming a cap-arbitrage channel.

Severity is set at 3 (mixed basis) because the measure is real and immediately effective but is an interim/partial tranche — narrower in scope than the October Federal Council action that completed the alignment.

Downstream implications

• Swiss-based commodity trading houses and marine insurers/P&I clubs

financing Russian crude cargoes must apply the revised price cap immediately from 12 August 2025.

• The 105-vessel port-access addition extends the shadow-fleet enforcement

perimeter that Swiss ports/services must screen against.

• Sets up the fuller 29 October 2025 Federal Council action as the

completion event — downstream consumers should treat the two as a single escalation sequence rather than duplicate measures.

Open questions

• Exact revised USD/bbl figure in the Swiss Annex 28 table was not

independently extracted from the PDF (table not machine-readable via fetch) — cross-check against the EU 18th-package figure (USD 47.6/bbl) if a precise Swiss-specific number is needed downstream.