Switzerland adds 4 entities, 5 persons and 41 vessels to Russia sanctions annexes — January 2026 Ukraine Ordinance amendment

Mechanism

The Ukraine Ordinance (Verordnung über Massnahmen im Zusammenhang mit der Situation in der Ukraine, SR 946.231.176.72) is Switzerland's primary legal instrument for autonomously mirroring EU Russia-sanctions listings — it is amended episodically (roughly monthly through this period) rather than in a single omnibus act. This filing captures one such episodic amendment: the 41 newly-listed vessels extend the port-access and services-prohibition list (Annex 33) targeting Russia's "shadow fleet" of sanctions-evading oil tankers, continuing the same designation logic as the EU Council's 18 December 2025 41-vessel shadow-fleet listing. The 4 newly-listed organisations span three jurisdictions (Vietnam, UAE, Russia), consistent with the pattern of shadow-fleet management and oil-price-cap-circumvention entities operating through third-country intermediaries rather than directly from Russia.

Downstream implications

• Continues the vessel-by-vessel attrition of the shadow fleet's available

tanker capacity, incrementally tightening insurance/port-access constraints on Russian seaborne crude exports.

• Third-country (Vietnam, UAE) entity designations signal Swiss/EU

enforcement attention is following the sanctions-evasion trade rather than only the origin jurisdiction.

• Sits inside a well-established periodic listing pattern (Dec 2025 tranche

→ this Jan 2026 update → Feb 2026 substantive completion) — expect further incremental annex amendments before the next omnibus package.

Open questions

• Whether the 5 newly-listed natural persons and 4 organisations are named

individually in the annex text (not machine-readable from the WBF summary page) — would allow company_refs / more granular sector tagging if a Fedlex consolidated-annex text becomes accessible from this VPS.