US imposes sanctions on seven senior Russians over Alexei Navalny poisoning

Alexei Navalny has been imprisoned

Credit: AFP

The United States has imposed sanctions on seven senior Russian government officials as it said its intelligence concluded that Moscow was behind the poisoning of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

In an action coordinated with the EU and UK, the US renewed demands that Russia free Mr Navalny, who was arrested in January upon his return to Moscow as he spurred massive rallies through his allegations of corruption by President Vladimir Putin.

A senior US official said: "The intelligence community assesses with high confidence that officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service FSB used a nerve agent known as Novichok to poison Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on August 20, 2020."

Officials said that the US would impose sanctions on "seven senior members of the Russian government" with the details expected to be released later on Tuesday.

They also said that the US would restrict exports to Russia as it vowed that Joe Biden would take a harder line than his predecessor Donald Trump.

A US official said: "We’re sending a clear signal to Russia that there are clear consequences to the use of chemical weapons."

Mr Navalny, 44, fell violently ill when he was on a domestic flight.

He was rushed to treatment in Germany where doctors said he had been poisoned with Novichok.

The nerve agent was developed by Soviet researchers and was also blamed in the 2018 attack against Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK.