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EU Accused of ‘Kissing Russia’s Butt’ After Turning to Moscow to Make Up for Shortage of Vaccine Supplies
- Josep Borrell backs Sputnik V’s Russian jab and congratulates the country on its ‘success’
- Russia expelled three European diplomats for jailing Alexei Navalny
- Sir Iain Duncan Smith says EU is ‘kissing Russia’s butt’ over vaccine
The EU has been accused of “kissing Russia’s butt” as it turns to Moscow to help make up for shortages of vaccine supplies.
Russia recently expelled three European diplomats from Sweden, Germany and Poland, after they observed protests calling for the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Despite the dispute, the head of EU Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, held a joint press conference yesterday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Borrell congratulated Russia on its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, before pressuring the independent European Medicines Agency to authorize the jab so that EU citizens can use it.
US officials believe Russia “misled” Borrell, as they press for a united front against the country amid calls to release Navalny.
US sources say Josep Borrell (left) was ‘played’ by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (right) after the EU’s foreign affairs chief congratulated the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and asked for its approval in Europe.
Speaking at the press conference on Friday, Mr Borrell said: ‘I take the floor to congratulate Russia on this success. It is good news for all humanity because it means that we will have more tools to face the pandemic. ‘
A former senior US official for Barack Obama told The Daily Telegraph: “Borrell shouldn’t have gone to Moscow if he hadn’t gotten some kind of substantial delivery in advance … It seems the Russians played Borrell.”
To put it bluntly, former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “This is an example of how the EU kisses Russia’s butt.”
Borrell congratulated Russia the same day the country expelled three EU diplomats for observing protests calling for the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden have been declared ‘persona non grata’ and had to leave Russia ‘shortly’
An anonymous EU diplomat added: It was not a good performance by Mr Borrell. I was not ready. Mr. Lavrov followed his own rules and got everything he wanted.
Borrell insists that he called for Navalny’s release when he met with the Russian foreign minister, in addition to calling for an investigation into the poisoning of the opposition leader.
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption researcher and leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he attributes to the Kremlin.
The Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
On Tuesday, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny violated the probation terms of his suspended sentence of a 2014 money laundering conviction and ordered him to serve two years and eight months in prison. The ruling sparked international outrage.
Tens of thousands of people across Russia took to the streets last month to protest the arrest of Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent critic.
According to the ministry, among them in St. Petersburg were Swedish and Polish diplomats, while Germany joined the crowd in Moscow on January 23.
As a result, they have been declared ‘persona non grata’ and asked to leave Russia ‘shortly’.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘This is an example of the EU kissing Russia’s butt’, as European leaders condemned the expulsion of three diplomats
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the decision: “We consider this expulsion to be unjustified and we believe that it is another facet of the things that can be seen in Russia at the moment and that they are quite far from the rule of law.”
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the expulsions and what happened to Navalny “from the beginning to the end”, and expressed his solidarity with Germany, Poland and Sweden.
Yesterday Dominic Raab tweeted: “The expulsion of German, Polish and Swedish diplomats from Russia simply for doing their job is a crude attempt to distract from Russia’s attacks on opposition leaders, protesters and journalists.
“We stand in solidarity with our European friends in the face of this unjustified action. This is the latest in a series of actions, since the @Navalny poisoning, that shows the Russian government turning its back on international law. ‘
