RUSSIA SUMMONS FRENCH, GERMAN, SWISS ENVOYS OVER NAVALNY CASE

Russia summoned the heads of the French, German and Swedish embassies to its Foreign Ministry in Moscow to discuss the case of dissident Alexei Navalny, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions against several senior Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin in October after laboratories in France, Germany and Sweden determined Navalny had been poisoned with the chemical weapon Novichok.

Russian officials have said they have obtained no hard evidence to support that claim. Navalny, 44, fell violently ill while on a commercial airliner en route from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow in August.

The plane made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, where Navalny was treated initially.

He was medically evacuated to Berlin two days later.

The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the sanctions in a statement as "illegitimate," "absolutely unacceptable" and based on a "pretext" and added “the countries that initiated this step have failed to provide any evidence on the case, both to the Russian authorities, despite repeated requests, and to their own EU partners."

It said Russia would impose sanctions on EU officials in retaliation, without specifying.

The EU's sanctions covered Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia's powerful Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor agency of the Soviet KGB. Navalny says the FSB was directly responsible for the attempted murder.

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