THE EUROPEAN UNION'S SANCTIONS POLICY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION'S ARMED AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

Given the current geopolitical picture of the world, the article suggests modernizing the approach to studying and understanding/interpreting the European Union's sanctions.

The relevance of this work is due to the need to adjust the vision of the European Union's sanctions, which is common in the academic and expert community, as well as the prospects of using the updated option in political discussions at the level of the European Union on the introduction of new sanctions against the Russian Federation.

The article is aimed at conceptual rethinking of the EU sanctions in the context of the Russian Federation's armed aggression against Ukraine by defining their legal nature and the sanctions policy principles. To achieve the aim, using general and special methods, in particular, analysis, deduction and induction, and the formal legal method, the authors studied international legal acts and sources of European Union law (the Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, etc.), as well as works by scholars and experts (L. Lonardo, C. Portela, C. Meissner and C. Graziani, etc.), specializing in the study of restrictive measures imposed by the EU institutions within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. The authors' conceptual vision of the EU sanctions has been significantly influenced by the approach of a well-known international law scholar A. D'Amato, who interprets international sanctions in the context of general systems theory.

The main results show that sanctions are linked to the principles of the European Union and the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union: the rule of law, support for human rights and the principles of international law, preservation of peace, etc.

The conclusions emphasize the stabilizing role of sanctions for the global world order and human security and suggest shifting the focus of researchers' attention from the procedures for adopting and geopolitical aspects of sanctions to their value component/basis. According to the authors, the corresponding transformation of the research approach will contribute to a more objective interpretation of sanctions.