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EU Parliament President David Sassoli is no longer allowed to travel to Russia
Photo: Olivier Matthys / POOL / EPA
The dispute between Russia and the EU is getting worse.
After Russia announced entry bans on Friday against EU Parliament President David Sassoli, EU Vice Commission President Vera Jourova and Berlin's Chief Public Prosecutor Jörg Raupach, the EU has now responded and summoned the Russian ambassador to Brussels.
Ambassador Vladimir Tschischow "was informed that the EU institutions and the EU member states are resolutely rejecting and sharply condemning this decision," said an EU statement.
The entry bans lacked any legal justification and were purely politically motivated.
It has been made clear to Chizhov that the EU reserves the right to take "appropriate action" in response to recent Russian decisions, it said.
The expulsion of Czech diplomats and the Russian plans for a list of "unfriendly foreign states" were also criticized.
There is no end in sight to the diplomatic tensions between Russia and the EU.
Moscow had justified the entry bans with what it considered to be unjustified EU sanctions against Russian officials.
They were issued in March in response to the imprisonment of the opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
Russia also accuses the German authorities of not having adequately responded to requests for legal assistance from Russian investigators.
The opposition politician Navalny was sentenced to a prison camp in Moscow at the beginning of February.
The EU considers the judgment to be inadmissible, among other things because Navalny had to be treated in Germany for several months after a nerve poison attack on him.
Russia does not see itself as the trigger for the »war of sanctions«
The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Sakharova, said on state television that Russia had not started the "war of sanctions".
But one is always ready to come to terms "in order to end this senseless confrontation in which there will and cannot be any winners."
An escalation of the sanctions would have complex negative effects on the Russian and Western economies, said Sakharova.
fek / dpa