Russia announced on Friday sanctions against senior European Union officials, including the President of the European Parliament, in retaliation for those put in place by Brussels in March amid renewed tensions between Moscow and the West. “The European Union continues its policy of illegitimate unilateral restrictive measures targeting Russian citizens and organizations,” Russian diplomacy said in a statement, accusing the EU of seeking to hinder Russia’s development “at all costs” .
According to the press release, Russia notably forbids entry into its territory to eight European officials, including the President of the European Parliament David Maria Sassoli, an Italian, and a Vice-President of the European Commission, Vera Jourova, a Czech national in charge. of Values and Transparency.
Mr Sassoli denounced this decision by assuring on his Twitter account: “no sanction or intimidation will prevent @ Europarl_EN (The European Parliament) or myself from defending human rights, freedom and democracy” . “The threats will not silence us,” he stressed. Moscow’s decision has also provoked an avalanche of criticism within the EU, the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, denouncing sanctions ” unjustified and unnecessary ”, while former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt called on the EU to“ go beyond symbolic sanctions ”and“ hit the oligarchs ”close to Russian President Vladimir Poutine.
According to the statement, Russia is responding to the sanctions imposed by the EU on March 2 and 22 on senior Russian officials, acts which Moscow sees as “launching an open challenge to the independence of Russian domestic and foreign policy. “. On March 2, the European Union announced its decision to impose restrictive measures against four Russians responsible according to the EU for serious human rights violations, including legal proceedings against Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, as well as the massive and systematic crackdown on freedom of peaceful assembly in Russia.
These measures included the ban on entry into EU territory and the freezing of the assets of these senior officials, including the head of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin and Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov. On March 22, the EU Council decided to introduce restrictive measures against those responsible for serious human rights violations in various countries, including torture and repression against LGBT people and political opponents in Chechnya, a republic in the Russian Caucasus.
Navalny as a backdrop
Dark beast of the Kremlin, Alexeï Navalny, 44, has been in prison since mid-January. He was arrested on his return from Germany where he had spent nearly five months recovering from poisoning with a nerve agent of which he accuses the Kremlin.
Among those targeted by the sanctions announced by Moscow on Friday is also Asa Scott, a head of a laboratory specializing in highly toxic substances in Sweden who confirmed the conclusions of a German laboratory on the poisoning of Mr. Navalny. Russia also placed on this list the Berlin prosecutor Jörg Raupach and the French deputy Jacques Maire, special rapporteur on the poisoning of Mr Navalny at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
“It doesn’t change my mandate regarding the poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny. On the other hand, this places the Russians in a more difficult situation to be able to cooperate, ”he told AFP. These new Russian sanctions come as several Western capitals have increased the expulsions of Russian diplomats in recent weeks, against the backdrop of other accusations of espionage, cyber-attacks or electoral interference. In return, Moscow has almost systematically taken retaliatory measures and expelled diplomats from the countries concerned.
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