BRUSSELS – Despite pressure from some European Union countries on Monday to further sanction Russia following the arrest of Kremlin critic Alexei A. Navalny and thousands of his supporters, the bloc’s leading foreign policy official will pay a visit to Moscow early next month and first meet with Russian officials.
According to diplomats in Brussels, the official, Josep Borrell Fontelles, will press the Russian government to kill Mr. Navalny to release. If not, new sanctions are possible. The decision came at a rare, personal meeting of the 27 European Union foreign ministers in Brussels.
The visit of mr. Borrell to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, is expected after Feb. 2, when Mr. Navalny is facing a court hearing that could send him to jail for several years. His supporters demanded that people take to the streets again on Sunday, two days before the trial.
In a news conference, Mr. Borrell said that the foreign ministers had the Russian repression against Mr. Navalny and his supporters condemned and demanded their release. He said he would be happy to see Mr. To meet Navalny, and his situation will be a point of discussion during his visit, but the trip was mainly to discuss strategic relations with Russia ahead of a summit of European leaders in March.
European leaders are “ready to respond” and to act according to the circumstances, “Borrell said. While foreign ministers differ on how to respond to Moscow, no concrete proposals have been made, so there is no need to make decisions now, he said.
Tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets of more than 100 Russian cities last Saturday for Mr. Navalny rallied during the biggest protests the country has seen since at least 2017. Several thousand were arrested and sometimes beaten, resulting in protests from the new Biden government as well as from European countries.
European diplomats talked on Monday about the imposition of new sanctions against Russia after pressure from several capitals for a difficult line, but decided to wait to see what happens with Mr. Navalny happens and the result of mr. Borrell’s visit.
In October, the European Union arrested six Russian officials and a state research institute for poisoning Mr. Navalny, along with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent created during the Soviet era, was sanctioned in August.
In the latest sign of how Mr. Navalny’s campaign shook the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday took the unusual step of responding personally. Mr. Putin released an extensive report by Mr. Navalny and his team deny being released last week after being jailed over the president’s alleged ‘palace’ on the Black Sea. The video has been viewed more than 86 million times on YouTube, highlighting the vulnerability of the Kremlin on the Internet, which is mostly not censored in Russia.
“Nothing described as my property there ever belonged to me or my next of kin, and never did,” he said. Putin said during a televised conference with university students. In the video, it is alleged that the large, lavish property, which allegedly includes vineyards and an underground hockey rink, is controlled by friends and close associates of Mr. Putin holding it for him.
Mr. Putin said he had no time to watch the 113-minute Navalny film in full, but watched excerpts. He rejected it by quoting a line from “The Twelve Chairs”, an early Soviet novel: “Girls, this is boring.” Mr. Putin has used the line at least once before – to refute US allegations of an attack on chemical weapons by the Syrian government in 2017.
Threats of new sanctions will certainly be used by the Russian state media to kill Mr. Describe Navalny as a plant or instrument in the West. Over the weekend, news reports on television featured prominent tweets from Mr. Borrell and other Western officials shown as proof that Mr. Navalny works against Russian interests.
Russia’s foreign ministry on Monday summoned US Ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan to criticize the US response to the pro-Navalny protests. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said the support the State Department had for Mr. Navalny expressed, amounts to ‘direct interference in the internal affairs of our country’.
The new attention on Russia extends to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, owned by the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom and 94 percent completed, that the United States is trying to stop with sanctions imposed on companies that help around the last mile pipes. The Biden government has confirmed Washington’s opposition to the pipeline on the grounds that it benefits the Russian state, harms the revenues of Ukraine and Poland and makes Germany more dependent on Russian natural gas.
The Russians are preparing to lay pipes near Denmark with Russian-owned ships, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to insist that the pipeline is a commercial enterprise and will continue to do so, despite the poisoning and arrest of Mr. Navalny.
Berlin hopes to resolve the issue with Washington through negotiations with the Biden government, but it is possible that a solution will include at least a temporary suspension of the project.
European foreign ministers are also under pressure to further sanction Turkey for violating the waters claimed by Greece and Cyprus with warships and a ship designed to explore natural gas. They persisted as Germany sought to start talks between Turkey and Greece over the dispute, which was dangerously heated last summer and is still volatile.
As European ministers met on Monday, diplomats from Greece and Turkey also met in Istanbul for the first talks in five years aimed at resolving their long-standing dispute over maritime borders. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had a good relationship with former President Donald J. Trump, also wants to establish better relations with the Biden government.
Even though they are talking, the officials are not even about what they will discuss. Greece wants to limit the conversation to the demarcation of the countries’ continental shelves and corresponding energy rights – the focus of last summer’s dispute.
But Turkey also wants other areas of disagreement on the table, including the status of some islands in the Aegean Sea and the rights of the Greek Muslim minority in Thrace.
At his news conference, Mr. Borrell also said that ministers expect Britain to grant full diplomatic status to EU representatives and that they look forward to working with the new Biden government.
“Be assured that we will coordinate much, much better than in the past,” he said.
Steven Erlanger reports from Brussels and Anton Troianovsky from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Melissa Eddy of Berlin and Niki Kitsantonis of Athens.