EU summons Russian ambassador after sanctions

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) – The EU on Monday summoned the Russian ambassador following Moscow’s decision to impose sanctions on high-ranking EU-officials.

“The Russian ambassador to the EU has been summoned,” Peter Stano, European Commission’s chief spokesperson on foreign policy, said at the EU institution’s daily press briefing in Brussels.

He explained that Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov “will be received in the afternoon by the secretary generals of the European Commission and the European External Action Service, where we will convey to him our strong condemnation and rejection of this decision.”

The diplomatic move came after Moscow banned on Friday David Sassoli, president of the European Parliament, and Vera Jourova, EU commissioner in charge of values and transparency, as well as six other high-ranking EU officials from travelling to Russia.

“These sanctions are obviously politically motivated and lack any legal justification,” Stano asserted.

“We are working on a united response, we are coordinating,” he said, adding that EU foreign ministers will discuss the relationship with Russia at their forthcoming meeting on May 10 in Brussels.

Russia decided to blacklist eight EU officials in response to the bloc’s restrictive measures imposed in March, accusing it of “interfering in Russia’s foreign and domestic policy” and “imposing a one-sided concept of a rule-based world order”.

The EU ordered travel ban and asset freeze against four Russian high-ranking officials over the arbitrary arrest, prosecution and sentencing of opposition figure Alexey Navalny under its global human rights sanctions regime.