Who are the EU’s new Russian deplorables?

They intend to impose visa-bans and asset-freezes on four officials – Alexander Bastrykin, Alexander Kalashnikov, Igor Krasnov, and Victor Zolotov – according to a leak to the Reuters news agency.

None of them are well known, unlike the big names whom Navalny’s people wanted to see punished, such as Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch and UK football club owner.

But at least one of the EU-four – Zolotov – is a close associate of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

They became friends in St. Petersburg when Zolotov was a bodyguard for former Russian president Boris Yeltsin and have practiced judo together.

Zolotov is trusted with Putin’s personal security in his role as director of the ‘Rosgvardiya’ national guard service.

And his family has become one of the richest in Russia in the real-estate sector.

Bastrykin, the director of Russia’s investigative committee, is said by Russian émigrés in London to be second after Zolotov in terms of Putin’s favour out of the EU-four.

Krasnov, the prosecutor general, is an up-and-coming figure, whose predecessor, Yuri Chaika, used the same office to become one of the most powerful men in Russia.

But even Russia experts know almost nothing about Kalashnikov, the director of Russia’s prisons, except that he worked for the FSB intelligence service most of his life.

The EU plan is to fast-track the sanctions by 5 March under Europe’s Magnitsky Act, a new register of the world’s worst human rights abusers, named informally after a late Russian dissident.

The EU then intends to add other names, potentially from China, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia, based on previous debates, to a longer blacklist of abusers down the line.

Meanwhile, the Reuters leak on the four names has prompted debate on whether EU foreign relations chief, Josep Borrell, who proposed them, was sending the right message to Moscow.

“All of them are very senior and Putin’s trusted friends,” Ivan Cherkasov, a Russian émigré in London said.

“If the [Reuters] report is correct … they’re very senior. Good to see the EU biting where it hurts,” an EU diplomat told EUobserver.

None of the four targets are known to travel much to the EU or to have financial assets in Europe, even though Bastrykin used to own real estate in the Czech Republic.

But even if the EU visa-bans and asset-freezes do not bite them directly, the stigma of EU sanctions is an irritant, traces of which stay online for ever.

EU message

For another EU diplomat, from a Russia-neighbouring country, Borrell’s four names were a dangerously weak message to Putin, however.

Russia’s EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, told German newspaper Die Welt on Monday that Moscow’s reaction would be “corresponding and proportionate” to the EU measures.

That indicated Russia might put some European VIPs on its no-fly list.

But if the EU looked so weak that Putin felt he could act with impunity, then he might escalate fighting in eastern Ukraine in spring in a more asymmetrical reaction, the EU diplomat said.

“I wouldn’t rule it out. Russia sees sanctions as a hostile act and they often react to threats by attacking,” he said.

And for Nikolai Petrov, a Kremlinologist at British think-tank Chatham House, the truth lay somewhere in between.

“All of them [the four Russians to be listed] are close to Putin and play very important roles,” Petrov told EUobserver.

But the EU sanctions remained “symbolic” and were designed “to be rather comfortable for both sides … they will be taken by the Kremlin as a sign that it’s business as usual in terms of cooperation with the European Union,” Petrov said.

Part of the new normal is Russian anti-EU propaganda.

And Petrov predicted Russia would denounce the EU sanctions as a Western attack on its “glory”, while the four Russian officials would wear them as a badge of honour.

Status quo

But building a new gas pipeline to Germany, called Nord Stream 2, is also part of EU-Russia business-as-usual.

And the status quo in Ukraine is equally amenable to Putin’s interests, Petrov said.

“They don’t need to make any radical moves in Ukraine,” he noted.

“Russia is quite comfortable having its finger in Ukraine’s wound,” he said, referring to Russian occupying forces in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

“It can use it to intensify conflict if needed, but if not needed, Russia would not be eager to take on the burden of recovery of this troubled region,” by fully conquering it, Petrov said.