Alexei Navalny

Ambassadors of 27 European Union nations have agreed further anti-Russian sanctions over the situation around Russian blogger Alexey Navalny, a source in one of the delegations told TASS on Monday.

New EU sanctions against Russia due to the situation around Alexey Navalny will be officially approved next week, President of the European Council Charles Michel said at a press conference following the first day of the EU online summit.

Biden and his foreign policy team are known quantities in Moscow, and their calls to be tougher on Russia are taken seriously there. In any case, the Kremlin sees an anti-Russian tinge to almost all the key points of the new US administration's agenda.

When Biden pledges to restore ties with Europe, the Kremlin assumes this will be done by othering Russia.

A Moscow judge on Feb. 20 upheld a ruling to jail top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, as he lost two court cases in one day and was headed for more than two years in a penal colony.

Residents of Moscow and Saint Petersburg on Sunday staged Valentine Day's flashmobs in residential courtyards and public squares, lighting their phone flashlights in support of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

Russia is ready to cut ties with the EU if Brussels initiates it, but for its part, Moscow is calling for cooperation, the Russian Foreign Ministry told TASS on Friday.

The European Union is working on a proposal to sanction Russia over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who suffered a near-fatal nerve-agent attack that he and Western governments blamed on Russian intelligence services.

Russia has issued an arrest warrant that covers a swath of other former Soviet republics for one of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's closest allies, a Moscow court said on Wednesday.

The European Union is likely to impose new sanctions on Russia over the Navalny case following the unsuccessful visit to Moscow by its top diplomat Josep Borrell, said experts interviewed by Izvestia. Borrell faced criticism in the EU, where his trip was deemed to be a failure.

At the moment of strained relations with Russia, some EU members, with their defending the Russian Nord Stream gas pipeline, further deepen the divisions in Europe and in the transatlantic partnership, writes the EUobserver portal, as EURACTIV reports.