EU member states on Monday March 1 formalized sanctions against four senior Russian officials involved in legal proceedings against Russian opponent Alexei Navalny and in the crackdown on his supporters.
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The principle of these targeted sanctions - visa ban and asset freeze in the EU - was decided at a meeting of European foreign ministers on February 22.
The ambassadors of the Twenty-Seven gave the green light on Monday morning.
According to two European sources, the personalities sanctioned are Alexandre Kalashnikov, director of penitentiary services, Alexandre Bastrykine, head of the Russian Investigation Committee, Igor Krasnov, Attorney General, and Viktor Zolotov, head of the Russian National Guard.
Their names are due to be published in the Official Journal of the EU on Tuesday.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said his country would respond "
of course
" to EU sanctions.
"
The European Union continues on an absolutely illegal path, it is an absolute dead end
", he declared, quoted by the Russian press agency Interfax.
The Europeans had already decided in mid-October to sanction six Russian personalities, including those close to President Vladimir Putin, after the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
The 44-year-old Russian opponent arrived Sunday in an area 200 kilometers east of Moscow to serve in a penal colony a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, which he and his supporters denounce as political.
The Russian justice commuted last January in prison a suspended sentence to which he had been sentenced in 2014. In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights had considered that in this case Alexeï Navalny and his brother Oleg had been deprived of their right to a fair trial, denouncing “
arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable
”
court decisions
.
Two independent United Nations experts on Monday called for an international investigation into the poisoning in August of the main opponent of the Kremlin, whose "
immediate release
" they are calling for
.
Navalny has been the target of multiple legal proceedings since his return to Russia in January from five months of convalescence in Germany following poisoning, for which he accuses Vladimir Putin and the secret services of being responsible.
His arrest on January 17 sparked large protests in Russia, to which authorities responded with more than 11,000 arrests, usually followed by fines and short prison terms.