BRUSSELS – Despite pressure from some European Union countries on Monday to further sanction Russia following the arrest of Kremlin critic Aleksei A. Navalny and thousands of his supporters, the bloc’s main foreign policy officer he will pay a visit to Moscow early next month and will meet with Russian authorities first.
The official, Josep Borrell Fontelles, will pressure the Russian government to release Navalny, according to diplomats in Brussels, and otherwise, new sanctions are possible. The decision was taken during a rare personal meeting of the 27 foreign ministers of the European Union in Brussels.
Borrell’s trip to meet his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, is scheduled for after February 2, when Navalny faces an audience that could send him to prison for several years. His supporters asked people to return to the streets on Sunday, two days before the hearing.
At a news conference, Borrell said foreign ministers condemned Russian repression to Navalny and his supporters and called for his release. He said he would be pleased to meet Navalny and that his situation would be a topic of discussion during his visit, but the trip was mainly to discuss strategic relations with Russia before a summit of European leaders in March.
European leaders are “ready to react” and act “according to the circumstances,” said Borrell. Although foreign ministers differed on how to respond to Moscow, there were no concrete proposals made, so there was no need to make decisions now, he said.
Tens of thousands of Russians gathered for Navalny on the streets of more than 100 Russian cities last Saturday in the biggest demonstrations the country has seen since at least 2017. Several thousand have been arrested and sometimes beaten, sparking protests from the new Biden government as well as European countries.
European diplomats discussed the imposition of new sanctions on Russia on Monday, after pressure from several capitals for a hard line, but decided to wait and see what will happen to Navalny and the result of Borrell’s visit.
In October, the European Union imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute on Navalny’s poisoning in August with Novichok, a deadly nervous agent created in Russia during the Soviet era.
At the last sign of how Navalny’s campaign shook the Kremlin, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday took the unusual step of responding in person. Putin denied an extensive report by Navalny and his team that was released last week, after he was arrested, about the president’s alleged “palace” on the Black Sea. The video has been viewed more than 86 million times on YouTube, highlighting the Kremlin’s vulnerability on the Internet, which has almost no censorship in Russia.
“Nothing that is described as my property ever belonged to me or my close relatives, and never has,” Putin said in a video conference with university students. The video claimed that the vast and luxurious estate, which it said included vineyards and an underground hockey rink, was controlled by friends and close associates of Putin, who maintained it for him.
Putin said he did not have time to watch Navalny’s 113-minute film in its entirety, but he did see a few excerpts. He rejected it by quoting a phrase from “The Twelve Chairs”, one of the first Soviet novels: “Girls, this sucks.” Putin has used the line at least once before – to reject U.S. claims of a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government in 2017.
Threats of new sanctions are sure to be used by Russian state media to describe Navalny as a Western blueprint or tool. Over the weekend, television news featured tweets from Borrell and other Western officials as evidence that Navalny was working against Russian interests.
On Monday, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the United States ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, to criticize the American response to the pro-Navalny protests. Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the support that the State Department expressed to Mr. Navalny amounted to “direct interference in the internal affairs of our country”.
The new attention on Russia extends to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, owned by Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom and 94 percent completed, which the United States is trying to prevent through sanctions imposed on companies that help to establish the last mile of tubes. The Biden government confirmed Washington’s opposition to the pipeline, claiming that it benefits the Russian state, undermines the revenue 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 Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany continues to insist that the pipeline is a commercial enterprise and will go ahead despite Navalny’s poisoning and imprisonment.
Berlin hopes to resolve the problem 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 chancellors are also under pressure to further sanction Turkey for its violation of the waters claimed by Greece and Cyprus with warships and a ship designed to exploit natural gas. They resisted as Germany tried to establish negotiations between Turkey and Greece over the dispute, which became dangerously heated last summer and remains volatile.
While European ministers met on Monday, diplomats from Greece and Turkey also met in Istanbul for the first negotiations in five years to resolve their longstanding dispute over maritime borders. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who had a good relationship with former President Donald J. Trump, also seeks to establish better relations with the Biden government.
Even while talking, the authorities disagree about what they will discuss. Greece wants the conversation to be limited to the outline of the countries’ continental platforms and corresponding energy rights – the focus of last summer’s dispute.
But Turkey wants other areas of disagreement at the table as well, including the status of some islands in the Aegean and the rights of Greece’s Muslim minority in Thrace.
In his press conference, Borrell also said that ministers expected Britain to grant full diplomatic status to EU representatives and that they hoped to work with the new Biden government.
“Make sure that we coordinate much, much better than in the past,” he said.
Steven Erlanger reported from Brussels and Anton Troianovsky from Moscow. The report was contributed by Melissa Eddy from Berlin and Niki Kitsantonis from Athens.