Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto (Green) will visit St. Petersburg on Monday 15 February for a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to an announcement from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The ministers are expected to discuss the arrest and detention of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, EU-Russia relations and the current situations in Nagorno-Karabakh, Belarus and Ukraine.
Finland and other EU countries have objected to the treatment of Navalny, who was jailed for three-and-a-half years earlier this week on a charge of violating the conditions of a suspended sentence.
Haavisto tweeted earlier this week that the sentence handed down to the opposition leader was unjustified.
"Navalny’s prison sentence is unacceptable and goes against [a] sense of justice. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled Navalny’s original conviction as arbitrary and unreasonable," the Foreign Minister wrote.
During his visit, Haavisto will also meet with representatives of civil society organisations, the ministry said.