UK sanctions six Russian officials over Alexey Navalny poisoning
The UK will enforce asset freezes and travel bans on officials responsible for the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, the foreign secretary has announced.
Dominic Raab today said the UK will apply sanctions announced this morning by the EU against six Russian individuals and an entity involved in the attempted murder of Navalny under the EU’s chemical weapons sanctions regime.
The sanctions will apply to some of the closest members of Russian President Vladamir Putin’s inner circle, including Andrei Yarin, his chief of domestic policy, Sergei Kiriyenko, his deputy chief of staff and Aleksandr Bortnikov, director of the Russian federal security service.
Sergei Menyailo, president of the Russian federation in Siberia, Pavel Popov, deputy minister of defence for Russia and Aleksei Krivoruchko, deputy minister of Russia’s Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology will also be hit with sanctions.
Raab said: “Together with our international partners, we are sanctioning those responsible for the criminal poisoning of Alexey Navalny.
“Any use of chemical weapons by the Russian state violates international law. We are determined to hold those responsible to account.”
It comes after the EU this morning announced similar sanctions on the Kremlin chiefs.
The EU said it had agreed sanctions against the same six figures involved in the “assassination attempt” against Putin’s most vocal critic.
The Foreign Office echoed the EU’s comments, saying the asset freezes and travel bans “significantly punish Russia’s reckless and malign behaviour”.
Navalny was poisoned with deadly nerve agent Novichok on 20 August this year, and was hospitalised in a serious condition. The Russian opposition figure and vocal Putin critic was put in a coma but survived.
Russian prosecutors refused to open an official criminal investigation into Navalny’s poisoning, claiming they found no sign that a crime had been committed.
In a statement today, the Foreign Office said: “The UK and its partners have agreed that there is no plausible explanation for Navalny’s poisoning, other than Russian involvement and responsibility.”
“Russia must hold a full and transparent investigation into the poisoning of one of its citizens on its soil with a banned chemical weapon.”
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