EU foreign ministers agreed Monday to impose new sanctions on Russia over the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, diplomats said.
The decision, taken at a meeting in Brussels, clears the way for more detailed work on the precise targets of new penalties but diplomats said they expected at least four officials to be hit, possibly including Russia’s prosecutor general, Igor Krasnov, and the head of its federal prisons service, Alexander Kalashnikov.
Some EU countries have called for new sanctions since Navalny was arrested last month upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he had been treated following an assassination attempt in August, in which he was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent while traveling in Siberia. He was accused of violating parole in a previous case in which he had received a suspended sentence on politically trumped-up fraud charges. — the European Court of Human Rights has condemned both the original fraud prosecution and Navalny’s recent sentencing to more than two years in prison for the parole violation.
Monday’s decision on sanctions was widely expected after a disastrous visit to Moscow by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, during which Russia expelled three diplomats from EU countries for allegedly attending demonstrations in support of Navalny. The expulsions were part of a broader effort by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to humiliate Borrell, who traveled to Moscow saying he hoped to reopen dialogue with the Kremlin.
One participant in Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting said that Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau had made a forceful case for new punitive measures, noting that Russia had consistently demonstrated that it was not interested in mutually beneficial cooperation with the EU.
Rau stressed that the persecution of Navalny and other political opposition figures, as well as arrests of thousands of demonstrators in recent weeks, should be met with an “adequate response” from Brussels.
Navalny and his close associates have called on Brussels to sanction oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin who have substantial assets in the West, but such a move presents potential legal complications. Two of Navalny’s top lieutenants, Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov, met with EU diplomats on Sunday to press for targeting the oligarchs.
In an interview with Die Welt before Monday’s decision was taken, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said Moscow would be ready to respond to any new punitive measures. “I am not going to speculate whether our partners will go for another round of illegitimate unilateral restrictive measures against my country,” Chizhov said in the interview. “When and if that happens, we will be ready to respond.”
