MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. Following Friday’s talks with Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told a press conference that Denmark is ready to join the anti-Russian sanctions that France and Germany are going to propose to their EU partners in the wake of the episode with blogger Alexey Navalny.
"Naturally, we will join the sanctions against these people [who are allegedly behind the Navalny incident]," he insisted.
Kofod added that Copenhagen condemns "in strongest possible terms, the assassination attempt on Navalny" and demands "a full and transparent investigation into who was responsible for that attempt to kill Navalny."
On Thursday, Le Monde, a prominent French paper, stated that the EU sanctions blacklist over the Alexey Navalny case may include nine people. According to the newspaper, these individuals are employees of the Presidential Administration and national security agencies. The restrictive measures involve freezing bank accounts and slapping entry bans to Europe, and they will be discussed in Brussels on October 12, Le Monde reported. However, the newspaper named neither the potential sanctions targets, nor the sources of its information.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not comment on the publication of the French newspaper, noting that this "cannot and should not be a reason for any reaction." Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously cautioned that restrictive measures in international relations could lead only to countermeasures.
Navalny ‘poisoning’ saga
Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. He fell into a coma and was hooked up to a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital.
On September 2, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the German Foreign Office had not provided the Russian ambassador with any proof of its version of the incident.