LONDON, February 10. /TASS/. The European Union and the United Kingdom are likely to introduce new anti-Russian sanctions over the situation surrounding Russian blogger Alexey Navalny, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Andrei Kelin told Russian reporters.
"There is always a risk of this kind. Now it is being broadly discussed at the European Union level. Naturally, we expect that after the visit [to Russia by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell] a ministerial meeting will take place first, followed by a summit, and some new EU sanctions will be announced," he said when asked by TASS about the possibility of new sanctions imposed on Russia.
"The United Kingdom has its own path in this regard. After quitting the European Union, it has been copying sanctions imposed by the EU, but on the national basis. To a certain extent, they have already started inventing their own sanctions, because the Magnitsky law was not adopted at the EU level, but Brits adopted their own version and added several people to it," the diplomat added.
The ambassador is sure that London will follow Brussels’ suit in terms of sanctions.
"This is most likely. And they will add their own [sanctions] to it," he said. "But this will have no effect on Russia’s foreign policy and decisions."
Borrell was on a visit to Russia between February 4 and 6. On February 7, he said the European Union may impose further sanctions against Russia over the situation with opposition blogger Alexei Navalny, having applied new mechanism of restrictions for the violation of human rights. According to him, he issue will be discussed at the upcoming meeting of EU foreign ministers on February 22.
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by saying that it was surprised by Borrell’s evaluation remarks on his visit to Moscow, because they differ from his previous statements.