Ashington announced, Tuesday, March 2, 2021, sanctions against several senior Russian officials in response to the poisoning of opponent Alexei Navalny, for whom the US intelligence services attribute responsibility to Moscow. These are the first sanctions against Russia announced by Joe Biden, who, since coming to power on January 20, has taken a much firmer tone towards the Kremlin than his Republican predecessor Donald Trump.
The sanctions, which target in particular seven senior officials whose names were not immediately announced, were taken “in close consultation with our EU partners” and are “a clear signal” sent to Moscow, a US official said on condition of anonymity. “We are not looking for an overhaul or an escalation,” said this source, stressing that the United States would not hesitate to show firmness whenever it deems it necessary.
For the United States, there is no doubt: Moscow is well behind the “assassination attempt” of the famous Russian opponent. “The intelligence community considers with a high degree of confidence that officials of the Russian Security Service (FSB) used a nerve agent known as Novichok to poison Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on August 20, 2020″ , said an official. “We reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of Alexey Navalny,” he added.
“Call for immediate release”
A few hours before this American announcement, which follows a similar decision by the EU, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had assured that Moscow would respond to Western sanctions. “No one has canceled the rules of diplomacy and one of those rules is the principle of reciprocity,” he said.
The 44-year-old opponent has been the subject of multiple legal proceedings since his return to Russia after five months of convalescence in Germany, where he was recovering from his poisoning. He arrived Sunday in a penal colony 200 kilometers east of Moscow to serve a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, which he and his supporters denounce as political. Russian justice last January transformed a suspended sentence to which he had been sentenced in 2014 into a firm prison. His arrest on January 17 sparked major demonstrations in Russia, to which the authorities responded with more than 11,000 arrests. usually followed by fines and short prison sentences.
Experts from the United Nations called on Monday for an international investigation into the poisoning of the opponent. In Brussels, the EU member states, for their part, formalized on Monday sanctions against four senior Russian officials involved in the legal proceedings against Alexeï Navalny, and in the crackdown against his supporters. According to two European sources, the personalities sanctioned are Alexandre Kalashnikov, director of prison services, Alexandre Bastrykine, head of the Russian Investigation Committee, Igor Krasnov, Attorney General, and Viktor Zolotov, head of the Russian National Guard. Their names are due to be published in the Official Journal of the EU on Tuesday.
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