The European Union (EU) has listed six people in Russia as part of an alliance with President Vladimir Putin in an attempt to assassinate opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia's domestic intelligence agency, is among the targets of a freeze on EU assets and
travel bans imposed on Thursday. Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of
staff in the presidential administration; And Andrei Yarin, head of the
presidential administration's domestic policy directorate.
Navalny accuses Putin of spewing poison,
Kremlin calls him CIA asset
The 27-member block also freezes the
assets of one entity: the State Scientific Research Institute for Organic
Chemistry and Technology.
Nine days after the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) imposed fines on August 20 for poisoning
a military-grade novice nerve agent in Russia. He was then flown’ to Germany
for treatment.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
said on Wednesday that the government in Moscow would retaliate against
bilateral sanctions against the European Union.
Ongoing disputes
Navalny's case is the latest in a series
of EU-Russia conflicts, including Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea the region in 2014, the poisoning of a former Russian double agent on US soil in
2018 and the controversial Belarusian presidency on August 9. Elections are
included.
Six years ago, as part of a larger package
of sanctions on Russia over its intervention in Ukraine, the European Union
blacklisted women near the Kremlin.
The fines on Thursday were based’ on a
German-French plan and were published in the block's official journal following
a speedy approval process.
The other three blacklisted Russians are
two deputy defense ministers, Aleksei Krivoruchko
and Pavel
Popov, and Putin's envoy to the Federal District of Siberia, Sergei Menyaylo.
The Russian government says it has no
evidence that Navalny was poisoned and officials have called the case an upset
by Western security services.
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