The Finnish foreign ministry has barred six Russian officials, including the speaker of parliament's Duma lower house Sergei Naryshkin, from attending an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Helsinki on 5-9 July. It is the first time Naryshkin, one of the most prominent of 150 Russians and Ukrainians placed on an EU blacklist over their role in the Ukraine crisis, has been barred from entering the EU. The OSCE meeting is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki accords, which improved relations between eastern and western Europe. ‘Finland has concluded, after thorough consultations and analysis, that the grounds for making the exemption for the entry into Finland of the persons that are on the EU Council's sanction list are not applicable,’ said the chief legal counsel for the Finnish foreign ministry. Naryshkin is on the blacklist because he publicly supported the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine.