PRO-WESTERN MP Dmitry Gudkov insisted yesterday that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov should explain why 89 European politicians have been banned from entering Russia and confirm their names.

Russia has shared the list with EU officials but has refused to release it.

The EU criticised the Russian bans at the weekend as “totally arbitrary and unjustified, especially in the absence of any further clarification and transparency.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said only that the blacklist was in response to EU economic sanctions and travel bans imposed on Russia for its supposed actions in Ukraine.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova asked whether Mr Gudkov had been “this active when EU countries put together their blacklists.

“And did he write such critical or perhaps objective letters to the leadership of EU countries with the request to stop compiling stop lists against Russian citizens?

“Probably he did, but unfortunately for some reason no one knows about it,” she suggested.