Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled to European allies that the transatlantic powers should move in concert to punish Russia’s abuse of imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny, according to a top European Union official amid a report the Biden administration is preparing new economic penalties of its own.
“Blinken asked us to coordinate our actions against Russia for the Navalny case,” EU high representative Josep Borrell told the Atlantic Council during a Tuesday event.
European officials agreed on Monday to impose sanctions on a handful of Russian officials implicated in the “persecution,” as Borrell put it, of the poison survivor and anti-corruption activist whose reports on corruption allegations centered on Russian President Vladimir Putin won him the Kremlin’s enmity. Blinken participated in the EU virtual conference meeting Monday as the Biden team prepares additionally to punish Moscow for a recent cyberattack that staggered U.S. and allied intelligence officials when it was discovered last year.
“We are still in the process of working through that now, but it will be weeks, not months before we respond,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday.
MACRON: PUTIN’S TARGETING OF NAVALNY ‘A HUGE MISTAKE’ FOR RUSSIAN STABILITY
Russian officials, fresh off a public relations victory in Moscow at Borrell’s expense, derided the EU sanctions threat as an operation of “bloc school of thought and anti-Russian stereotypes.” U.S. and European powers have laws that authorize the imposition of sanctions on perpetrators of human rights abuses, but Russian officials maintain that Navalny’s conviction for violating the terms of his probation is of no concern to Western officials.
“We consider categorically unacceptable the constant unlawful and absurd demands for the ‘release’ of a citizen of the Russian Federation who was convicted of economic crimes by a Russian court on the territory of our country in accordance with Russian law,” the Russian foreign ministry said Monday. “In international practice, this is called interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”
Navalny’s admittedly “harsh” conviction rested on the fact that he failed to notify Russian authorities or “provide documents and provide proper explanations” for why he didn’t check in with Russian probation officers last fall pursuant to the terms of his probation. Navalny, during the months in question, was recovering in Germany from a chemical weapons attack widely regard as carried out by Russian security services.
“I was in a coma,” Navalny reminded the court. “Then I was in intensive care. I provided medical documents. You had my place of residence and contact information.”
Navalny urged Western officials to retaliate by sanctioning Russian oligarchs in Putin’s inner circle, but Borrell rejected this proposal as impractical, given the potential for sanctioned individuals to challenge the decision in court.
“So we can not punish people just because we don’t like them, we have to punish people because we have proofs and strong awareness that they have been participating in the things that we reject,” Borrell said Tuesday. “And sorry — it’s not so easy to establish a relationship between the oligarchs, even if they are very rich … and the persecution of Navalny.”
That decision was a disappointment for some European allies, particularly in the post-Soviet space, where memories of Moscow’s aggression and human rights abuses still burn. These Russia hawks argue that U.S. and European officials could use the occasion of Navalny’s persecution to punish various oligarchs for other crimes.
“It’s not very strong, but it’s still better than nothing,” a European diplomat said of the more limited sanctions measures before expressing hope that the “U.S. response … will be much firmer and more direct and more impactful.”
Biden has stirred some trepidation among Central European allies who see initial signs that he might not impose stiff sanctions on a controversial Russian energy pipeline, but the American president is expected to slap Russia with an array of punitive measures related to the Navalny case and the recently-discovered SolarWinds hack, which has been described as one of the most alarming breaches in the history of state-sponsored cyberattacks.
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That American response will be predicated on the assessment that the recent Russian attack was “‘indiscriminate’ and potentially ‘disruptive,’” according to a Washington Post report that suggests U.S. officials plan to argue that the Russian hack is unlike anything carried out by American spy agencies.
“We have asked the intelligence community to do further work to sharpen the attribution that the previous administration made about precisely how the hack occurred, what the extent of the damage is, and what the scope and scale of the intrusion is,” Psaki said of the hack. “Of course, we want to focus on giving our team the time they need to take additional steps to fine-tune the attribution, and we reserve the right to respond at the time and a manner of our choosing.”
