Those responsible for legal proceedings against the opponent to the Kremlin will be specifically sanctioned by Brussels.
The EU’s decision to sanction Russian officials comes after the confirmed imprisonment of opponent Alexei Navalny.
KEYSTONE
EU foreign ministers on Monday decided to adopt new targeted sanctions against those responsible for the treatment of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, several diplomats said. A “political agreement” in this sense has been found.
The head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell has been instructed to propose a list of names of Russian officials to be sanctioned, diplomats said. No oligarch should be affected, they say.
The agreement was reached after a long discussion between the ministers, but no names will be mentioned after the meeting. “These will be targeted, proportionate and legally based sanctions,” said one of the diplomats.
Police and judicial apparatus
The sanctions should target “those responsible for the police and judiciary responsible for the unacceptable treatment of Alexei Navalny,” Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg said on arrival at the meeting.
“It is hardly possible to sanction the oligarchs. We can only act against officials, and that only if we have proof, ”for his part stressed the head of Luxembourg diplomacy Jean Asselborn.
“If it comes to sanctioning ten Kremlin officials who do not like to travel and have no property abroad, then it will not be painful and it will not convey the message,” warned Leonid Volkov , a relative of Alexeï Navalny, who came to Brussels to plead for European sanctions against oligarchs close to the Kremlin. “For us, this will mean that we have to continue our fight to convince,” he added.
Moscow “ready to react”
The Kremlin had issued a warning to Europeans ahead of their meeting. Moscow is “ready to react” in the event of “a new round of restrictive, unilateral, illegitimate measures”, warned Russian Ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, in an interview with the German daily Die Welt.
Alexei Navalny, 44, was arrested in January on his return from Germany where he had been treated after being poisoned in Russia. Prosecuted for a fraud dating from 2014, he was ordered to serve a sentence of approximately two and a half years in prison. He was also found guilty of “libel” against a veteran of the Second World War and fined 850,000 rubles (approximately 10,200 francs).
The EU denounced a “politicization” of Russian justice and demanded the unconditional release of the opponent.
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