EU nations weighing fresh Russia sanctions: Poland

Bloomberg

European Union countries may decide this week whether to impose new political or economic sanctions on Russia after the UK accused Moscow of using a nerve agent on its territory, according to a senior Polish government official.
“Poland supports the view that we should show solidarity within the EU and NATO and show Russia that it can’t cross new boundaries,” Michal Dworczyk, who heads Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s office, told Radio Zet on Monday. Economic sanctions as well as expulsions of Russian diplomats by some EU nations are being considered, he said.
The comments come as Prime Minister Theresa May’s government signals that it will seek further action against President Vladimir Putin’s government after ordering 23 Russian diplomats to leave the UK Britain has received backing from countries including Germany and France as well as the US for its position that Russia is to blame for the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in England, the first use of a nerve agent on European soil since World War II.
Morawiecki said after a weekend phone conversation with May that Poland stood “hand-in-hand” with the UK “in the face of illegal and aggressive actions by Russia.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due in Warsaw for talks with Morawiecki and President Andrzej Duda. EU leaders then meet for a summit in Brussels at the end of the week, when they are due to discuss the poisoning case.
Russia denies that it had anything to do with the incident. Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said Johnson’s update would provide a basis for possible EU action against Russia. However, she cited the challenge the EU already faced in mustering the unanimity needed to impose and maintain economic sanctions against Russia over its encroachment in Ukraine.
‘FURTHER ACTIONS’
“This is an important discussion on the follow-up to all of this,” Wallstrom told reporters in Brussels on Monday. “We of course know that it has not been easy always to get the unity to back up the sanctions that we already have decided on. But I think the discussion today will give a good ground for further actions. Very, very important that we are united.”
Johnson, speaking to reporters as he arrived for the meeting, said the UK was heartened by the level of support it was receiving.
“There’s scarcely a country around the table here in Brussels that has not been affected in recent years by some kind of malign or disruptive Russian behavior,” Johnson said. “And that is why I think the strength and the resolve of our European friends is so striking today.”
Meanwhile, Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, said that his country has “no stockpiles whatsoever” of nerve agents. He said Porton Down, a UK military facility, has conducted research on chemical weapons eight miles (13 kilometers) from Salisbury, the city in western England where the victims were found poisoned on March 4. Asked if that meant he was blaming Britain, he said he didn’t have “any evidence of anything having being used.”
British Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament last week that the Skripals, who remain in critical condition, were poisoned with a weapons-grade nerve agent from the Novichok group.
She accused the Kremlin of “unlawful use of force” against the UK
and ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats over the first use of a nerve agent on European soil since World War II.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow retaliated expelling the same number of British envoys. It also ordered the closing of the British consulate in St. Petersburg and told the British Council to end its activities in Russia.
UK foreign secretary Johnson, who said that it is “overwhelmingly likely” Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered the chemical attack, said the Kremlin’s “denial, obfuscation and delay” over the case is “exactly the tactics that we’ve come to expect from Russia over the last few years.”
Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague will arrive in Britain, and samples will be shared with them for independent testing, Johnson said.
“People have all now experienced, whether it’s in America, Germany, France, say nothing of the Baltic countries, the Balkans and Poland, they’ve all experienced Russian meddling. Malign, disruptive Russian behavior over the last few years,” Johnson said.
“They can see a country that is going in the wrong direction and that’s why they’re so inclined now not to give Russia the benefit of the doubt and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the UK.”

Observers charge fraud in Putin’s election victory
Bloomberg

Russian election observers denounced what they said were large-scale violations in the presidential vote that handed Vladimir Putin a crushing victory, including ballot-stuffing that was captured on state-controlled cameras.
Golos, an election-monitoring organisation, said it registered more than 1,500 violations in regions across Russia. Several cases of people stuffing ballot boxes at polling stations, including near Moscow, were recorded on cameras set up by the authorities to ensure a transparent vote.
Opposition leader Alexey Navalny said data compiled by his observers at polling stations showed that the official turnout of 67.5 percent was inflated by 10 percentage points. Navalny was barred from contesting the election and had called for a boycott of Sunday’s vote in protest. There was “widespread fraud,” according to Open Russia, an opposition organization founded by former oil tycoon
and Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Putin, 65, won a record fourth term to extend his 18-year-rule until 2024 with almost 77 percent of the vote, the highest ever score in a Russian presidential election, according to near-final results. His re-election comes amid spiraling tensions with the West, with the latest standoff sparked by a suspected nerve-agent poisoning in the UK.