Navalny case: EU and US impose sanctions on Russia

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The EU has put its sanctions in place against Russia for cracking down on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

It imposed entry and property bans on four senior representatives of the judiciary and law enforcement system, as it announced in the EU Official Journal on Tuesday.

Affected are Attorney General Igor Krasnow, the director of the prison administration, Alexander Kalashnikov, the head of the investigative committee, Alexander Bastrykin, and the head of the National Guard, Viktor Solotov.

The US also imposed sanctions on Russia in the Navalny case on Tuesday.

Seven high-ranking Russians are affected.

The US secret services had come to the conclusion with a high degree of certainty that employees of the Russian secret service FSB had carried out the attack with a neurotoxin from the Novichok group, a US government representative said on Tuesday.

The new US President Joe Biden had announced a tougher course towards Moscow.

A week ago on Saturday, a Russian court upheld Navalny's sentence to two and a half years in a prison camp.

He was charged with a probation violation while in Germany for treatment after a poison attack in the summer.

Navalny was taken to detention center N2 in the small town of Pokrov, which is around 200 kilometers east of Moscow.

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The EU is now using its new sanctions framework against human rights violations for the first time.

The names of those affected had already become known in the past few days.

This has caused annoyance in several Member States as it could undermine the effectiveness of the sanctions.

Because of the advance warning, those affected could withdraw assets from the EU before they can be frozen.

Navalny and the European Parliament had also called for sanctions against Russian oligarchs who are close to President Vladimir Putin.

The EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell had pointed out that there had to be “a clear connection” to Nawalny's arrest and conviction.

Otherwise the sanctions could be challenged before the European Court of Justice.

After the poison attack, the EU had already put six Russians on its sanctions list.

Among them were confidants of President Putin such as the deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiriyenko, and the head of the FSB's domestic intelligence service, Alexander Bortnikov.