Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Russia said it’s “deeply disappointed” by the European Union’s response to being sent a blacklist of 89 people barred from entering the country.

The list was sent “in confidence” to the EU’s permanent representative office in Moscow after “repeated requests” so that they could inform those banned after “several cases when we have been obliged to refuse entry,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov told reporters in Moscow on Monday.

Russia began compiling the blacklist more than a year ago and “a separate decision was taken in each case, with concrete reasons,” Meshkov said. “The list was handed over at the technical level” through consular officials and “we didn’t consider it some sort of political step,” he said.

The European External Action Service, the 28-nation EU’s diplomatic arm, said in a statement on Saturday that Russia had responded to demands for transparency by providing the “confidential ‘stop list’” of 89 people barred from the country. The EEAS called the list “totally arbitrary and unjustified.”

When the EU crosses “all boundaries” by its actions, “how can one trust such partners?” Meshkov said.

The ban is in response to EU measures targeting officials from Russia imposed over the conflict in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, accusing the bloc of seeking confrontation over the issue. Russia showed compromise by sharing the list and she was “shocked” at European efforts to make political capital out of it, she said on her Facebook account.

‘Undesirable’ Person

In September, Rebecca Harms, a Green Party member of the European Parliament, said Russian authorities denied her entry when she arrived from Brussels to observe an espionage trial. She said she was kept waiting for three hours at the Moscow airport before being told she was an “undesirable” person and that her entry would be a “criminal act.”

Harms, who holds a German diplomatic passport, said at the time she was probably targeted because she had been a frequent traveler to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and had supported the EU’s sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

The Russian blacklist “further diminishes mutual trust and hampers any efforts for constructive dialogue to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the current geopolitical crisis,” European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who is German, said in an e-mailed statement on Saturday.