Russia yesterday said it was hitting EU officials with sanctions for their response to the poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who the Kremlin said was suffering from "delusions of persecution". 

The foreign ministry in Moscow summoned several senior EU diplomats before announcing the new travel bans.

In response to "confrontational" sanctions imposed by the bloc in October, Russia "decided to expand the list of representatives of EU member states and institutions who will be denied entry to Russia."

The announcement came a day after Navalny, 44, said in a report he had impersonated an official in the Kremlin's Security Council and extracted an admission of guilt from a toxins expert with the FSB security service.

In a video of the conversation published by Navalny, the alleged FSB agent says agents placed poison in Navalny's underwear this summer.

The anticorruption campaigner was flown for treatment to Germany in August where labs concluded he was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent.

Navalny's video of his conversation with the man named Konstantin Kudryavtsev racked up more than 12 million views in less than 24 hours and social media were abuzz with memes about Navalny's underpants.

The Kremlin yesterday described Navalny as a "sick" man who was suffering from "delusions of persecution". The FSB described the phone call as "fake" and said it would not have been possible without "the support of foreign intelligence services.