Russia yesterday abruptly withdrew a rare ban on foreign travel for two fierce critics of the Kremlin after the move was roundly ondemned at a session of EU lawmakers.

Former Senior Minister Boris Nemtsov and his political ally Vladimir Milov said they had learned of the travel restriction by telephone on Wednesday while attending a human rights panel in Europe.

The six-month ban orders were published on both men's blogs and were supposed to have gone into effect as soon as they returned to Russia.

The decision was immediately condemned by European Parliament lawmakers and resulted in another sharp diplomatic exchange in which the foreign ministry accused the European Union of interfering in Russia's domestic affairs.

But those words were soon followed by an emergency meeting of the Federal Bailiff Service that concluded with a dramatic reversal of the initial ban.

The bailiffs initially said the ban was imposed because the two had failed to publish a proper correction to a pamphlet alleging that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had made his childhood friends wealthy in modern Russia. The court ruling said the correction that appeared in the Kommersant business daily on March 26 was too short.