The United Nations also allows 2 years non-payment before a member looses voting rights, currently 4 countries https://www.un.org/en/ga/about/art19.shtml One of the countries, Venezuela, can't pay due to sanctions https://www.france24.com/en/20200622-venezuela-blames-us-san...

Many things operate this way - you want to charge people who can pay but offer the service for free to those who actually cannot pay (either because of sanctions or lack of funds, etc). The tricky part is avoiding abuse; but "country claiming it is sanctioned when it is not" is pretty unlikely.

Why not apply a creditor's default to enforce the debt anyway?

Apparently the sanctions also don't requite cutting Internet access to Russia. As long as Russia is still on the Internet we should maintain accurate records. If that means maintaining records for free, so be it.

This is akin to the fact that some US states will issue identification to people regardless of their immigration status.

IPv4 space is a super scarce resource, this is IPv4 space held by non-paying RIPE members. Why should it not be distributed among paying members, many of which are desperate for more IPv4?

It’s not like it’s impossible for Russian entities to pay either, I regularly receive payments to my European account from Russian companies.