Brussels, Mar. 22, (dpa/GNA) – EU sanctions on 33 people, including Russian judges, prison officers and two Russian penal colonies, went into force on Friday in response to the death of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
These are the first EU sanctions after the death of Navalny in February.
Among those targeted by the sanctions are the director of IK-2, the Siberian penal colony where Navalny was imprisoned and died, as well as the prison camp’s doctor, Alexei Vassilyevich Lisyuk.
According to the sanctions published in the EU Official Journal, a register of EU laws, the individuals were targeted for human rights violations and their neglect of Navalny’s health in Russian prison.
The move follows the choreographed re-election of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, the best-known Russian opposition figure, was a fierce critic of Putin. The circumstances of his death at the Siberian penal colony have yet to be clarified. Many Putin critics and Western countries hold the Kremlin responsible.
Russia’s Election Commission declared a landslide victory for Putin following an election campaign marked by allegations of manipulation. Other opposition figures and Kremlin critics were refused a place on the ballot, driven into exile abroad or imprisoned.
Protestors demonstrated during polling in memory of Navalny.
An EU statement also condemned Russia for holding “so-called ‘elections'” in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.
The EU condemned Moscow for holding the elections in Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in violation of international law back in 2014, as well in occupied portions of the Ukrainian mainland regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson.