The EU Foreign Ministers will discuss further steps towards Russia due to the situation around Alexei Navalny (the founder of FBK – the fund is included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent ) at a meeting on February 22. This is stated in the statement of the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
“The European Union will return to this issue at the upcoming meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council and discuss its implications and possible further actions,” the document says. What exactly these steps may consist of and whether they imply the imposition of sanctions against Russia is not specified.
The day before, on February 2, the Simonovsky court in Moscow replaced Navalny's suspended sentence with a real one. Thus, the oppositionist was sentenced to 3.5 years in a general regime colony, but he will spend two years and eight months in prison, taking into account the year spent under house arrest during the preliminary investigation of the Yves Rocher case.
After the verdict was announced, calls for an uncoordinated action appeared on social networks. Security measures were stepped up in the center of Moscow; at the request of the police, the Okhotny Ryad, Ploshchad Revolyutsii, Teatralnaya and Aleksandrovsky Sad metro stations were closed until further notice. Detentions took place at Manezhnaya Square.
