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US and EU issue sanctions against Russian officials over Alexei Navalny jailing

File picture of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Picture by Dmitri Lovetsky, Associated Press
File picture of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Picture by Dmitri Lovetsky, Associated Press File picture of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Picture by Dmitri Lovetsky, Associated Press

The US and the EU have announced co-ordinated sanctions against Russian officials and businesses for a nearly fatal nerve agent attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent jailing.

Senior US officials did not immediately identify the Russian officials targeted, but the Biden administration also announced sanctions under the US Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act against 13 businesses and another enterprise, most of which it said were involved in production of biological and chemical agents.

The US intelligence community concluded with high confidence that Russia’s Federal Security Service used the Russian nerve agent Novichok on the dissident last August, a senior administration official said.

Today’s sanctions will be the first of several steps by the Biden administration to “respond to a number of destabilising actions”, a source said.

The sanctions are the first against Moscow by the Biden administration, which has pledged to confront President Vladimir Putin for alleged attacks on Russian opposition figures and hacking abroad, including of US government agencies and businesses.

The Biden administration co-ordinated the sanctions with the European Union, which had already imposed sanctions against a small number of Russian officials in Mr Navalny’s case.

Some rights groups previously faulted the EU for not targeting the most important Russian officials allegedly involved. The European bloc announced new sanctions today targeting high-ranking Russian officials over the jailing of Mr Putin’s most high-profile political foe.

The 27-nation bloc imposed bans on travel and froze the assets in Europe of Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation; Igor Krasnov, the prosecutor-general; Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard; and Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Prison Service.

Besides the Navalny sanctions, US officials have said the administration plans to respond soon to the massive Russian hack of federal government agencies and private corporations that laid bare vulnerabilities in the cyber supply chain and exposed potentially sensitive secrets to elite Kremlin spies.

Mr Navalny, 44, was poisoned by the Russian nerve agent in an attack the US and others linked to Mr Putin’s security services. After months of recuperation in Germany, Mr Navalny flew home to Moscow in January and was arrested on arrival for an alleged parole violation.

His detention sparked street protests across Russia, and police arrested thousands of demonstrators. Authorities have transferred the opposition leader to a penal colony to begin serving a sentence after what rights groups said was a show trial.