"We believe that today's decision of the European court is political and not based on the legal evaluation of the case circumstances," Novikov was quoted as saying by company's press service.
He added that in 2014 the EU officials claimed that the anti-company sanctions were linked to the Malaysian airlines aircraft crash over Ukraine in July 2014, as Almaz-Antey manufactures, in particular, BUK M1-2 and M2E surface-to-air missiles, believed to have shot down the plane. However, in September 2016, the EU Council acknowledged that there were no links between the company and the incident.
On July 30, 2014, the EU Council made the decision to include the company in the lists of sanctions, saying that Almaz-Antey, as a Russian state-owned company, "contributed to the destabilization of Ukraine," since "Russian authorities were providing heavy weaponry to separatists in Eastern Ukraine."
Almaz-Antey filed a lawsuit against the EU Council in May 2015, while the second appeal by the company was sent to the EU court in September. The company contests individual sanctions against it, as well as sectoral restrictions.
