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Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that in response to the EU’s “confrontational” actions, it had “decided to expand the list of EU member states and institutions that will be banned from entering the Russian Federation. Russia”.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned senior diplomats from Germany, France and Sweden to express dissatisfaction with their reaction to the poisoning of A. Navaln.
VIDEO: Alexei Navaln called his poison
The laboratories of these EU members confirmed earlier this year that A. Navalnas had been poisoned with the nerve paralyzing substance “Novičiok” created by Soviet scientists. The Russian authorities categorically deny having contributed to the poisoning of the opposition.
In response to the Navaln poisoning, the EU banned six suspects, including Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), from entering its territory and froze their accounts.
Representatives from Germany, France and Sweden were summoned to the Foreign Ministry “in connection with the imposition of EU sanctions against Russia,” a spokeswoman told the AFP news agency.
European diplomats did not issue official comments.
The new sanctions were announced a day after Navaln reported that, by pretending to be a high-ranking official, he had obtained a confession from a security agent that the FSB had tried to poison him this summer.
According to an audio recording posted on the Kremlin critic’s blog, the poison was in A. Navaln’s shorts.
On Monday night, the FSB said that the conversation announced by A. Navalnas was “false” and that an official inspection had been initiated as a result. According to the FSB, the opposition was assisted by foreign special services.
Navaln, 44, felt ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow in August. When the plane landed unexpectedly in Omsk, he was taken to a hospital in that city and, a couple of days later, he was flown to Germany for treatment.
Last week, investigative journalism website Bellingcat, US television CNN, Russian investigative journalism website The Insider, and German weekly Der Spiegel reported that a joint investigation had discovered that FSB chemical weapons experts had been following criticism from the Kremlin for years.
In a statement issued earlier this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated that EU countries were refusing to cooperate with Russia in the investigation of the Navaln incident.
Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations that its security services contributed to the crime.
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