European Union foreign ministers last month agreed on new sanctions related to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison.
Tributes paid to Alexei Navalny after his death (Reuters) (via Reuters) {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}}
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters on Monday that ministers approved the package at a meeting in Brussels. The restrictions would include about 30 people and two organizations, according to an early draft of the proposal seen by Bloomberg.
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The decision came after Vladimir Putin was declared the winner of a presidential election whose outcome had been predetermined. President Putin extended his quarter-century rule after winning 87.3% of the vote in an election without a strong challenger.
According to the draft, candidates included in the list include the IK-3 and IK-6 penal colonies, as well as several prisons and government officials and judges. The EU last month approved a modest sanctions package targeting Moscow, the 13th since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These measures focused on enforcing existing restrictions.
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Navalny's allies had called on people to protest Putin's election at midday on Sunday. At the time, long lines formed outside some polling stations, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in a symbolic show of defiance amid the Kremlin's harshest crackdown on opposition in decades.
Navalny rose to prominence during Russia's massive pro-democracy protests in 2011 and 2012. The Kremlin critic was barred from running in the 2018 presidential vote after being found guilty of fraud charges that the US and EU criticized as politically motivated.
He fell ill on a flight to Moscow in August 2020 after meeting with local activists in the Siberian city of Tomsk. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international watchdog, confirmed that a banned Novichok group of nerve agents was used in the poisoning.
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The opposition leader was transferred from a prison on the outskirts of Moscow to the remote prison colony IK-3 in the Arctic Circle in late December. In his last post on X (formerly Twitter) on February 14, he reported that he had been sentenced to 15 days in a punishment cell, his fourth since his arrival there.
Separately, the EU also approved new sanctions against Hamas leaders and violent Israeli settlers, Borrell said, without providing additional details.
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