Britain's U.S. sanctions on the poisoning of Navajo

The two countries imposed sanctions on seven Russian citizens and made a joint statement warning Russia of the use of chemical weapons.

Washington imposed further sanctions on two other people and four Russian institutes, who said they were involved in researching chemical weapons or what it described as an assassination against Navajo.

Navajo was sent to Germany for medical treatment after being poisoned in Siberia on August 20, 2020, with Western experts concluding he was the military nervous agent Novichok.

Moscow has rejected their conclusions and accused the West of a slander campaign against it.

The sanctioned “ides are directly responsible for planning or carrying out the attack on Navajo”, a statement by the British Foreign Office said.

British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said the move was a warning to Russia.

“We are sending a clear message that any use of chemical weapons by the Russian state violates international law and that a transparent penal investigation must be conducted”, he said.

The sanctions will affect those who have wealth abroad.

The British document contains these names: Alexey Aleksandrov, Vladimir Panyaev, Ivan Osipov, Vladimir Bogdanov, Kiril Vasilyev, Stanislav Makhakov and Alexei Sedov. Document Says They Are All Members of Russian Security Service FSBs were directly or indirectly involved in poisoning.

The U.S. Treasury Department later announced that it was imposing sanctions for the same people, as well as two other Russian officials reportedly involved in poisoning: Konstantin Kudryavtsev and Arthur Jyrov.

The Treasury Department also included in the sanctions the FSB) Institute of Criminals, a laboratory where most persons involved in the attack worked, and the Russian Defence Ministry's State Institute of Experimental Medicine.

The State Department also announced that it imposed sanctions on two other Russian military scientific institutions involved in chemical weapons.

Neither the Kremlin nor any of the people on the list offered any immediate comment.

The British government cited evidence including telephone data and travel showing that some of the operatives were present in the Siberian town of Tomsk at the time of poisoning.

For others, he said he had reasonable grounds to suspect that, because of their positions in the intelligence service, they had “responsibility to provide support or promote operations of operatives performing operation”.

Navalny was imprisoned for violating parole for a conviction based on charges he said were politically motivated when he returned to Russia earlier this year from Germany.

“We urge Russia to fully respect the Chemical Arms Convention, including its obligations to declare and dismantle its chemical weapons programme”, the US-Britain joint statement said.

“We remain determined to respect international norms against the use of chemical weapons”, the statement said.