In response to what it refers to as “sham” secession votes in four regions of Ukraine, the European Union has confirmed a broad ban on offering crypto services to Russians. At the same time, sanctions are being tightened. CoinDesk broke the story first last week.

After the invasion of Ukraine in February, the union enacted an eighth set of economic and political sanctions against Russia, reinforcing a previous restriction that imposed a $10,000 ($9,900) cap on cryptocurrency payments to European wallets.

The European Commission issued a statement on Thursday following the approval of its proposals from last week by EU governments. “The existing prohibitions on crypto assets have been tightened by banning all crypto-asset wallets, accounts, or custody services, irrespective of the amount of the wallet,” the statement read.

The sanctions come in response to Russia’s attempt to annex the areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, and specifically aim to curb the price of oil that Russia may sell.

The EU said in April that it will cap Russian payments to European cryptocurrency wallets at 10,000 euros in an effort to prevent the use of digital assets to get around limitations on sizable bank transfers. With the new measures, that amount might now be zero.

The crypto crackdown, which went into force later on Thursday after being published in the EU’s official journal, prohibits European crypto providers from providing services to Russian citizens and businesses unless they are also citizens of the EU.

According to information obtained by CoinDesk, it appears to be driven by concerns that the current 10,000 euro cap was insufficient to stop payments from Russia.

After restrictions were put in place in April, “we found that transactions were still going on on some scale,” an EU official said. We needed to make sure that EU operators were no longer providing these services.

However, the person, who was not authorized to comment on the record, noted that the plans might be inspired by similar policies from other European countries.

The official stated, “Switzerland in particular has consistently complied with all of our [sanctions] procedures.” “We anticipate that this will also occur here.”