Biden to sanction Russia over Navalny poisoning, jailing

Morgan Chalfant, Maggie Miller
The Hill
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 09:02 UTC

© Instagram/KJN

Alexey Navalny • Red Square, Moscow

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow's poisoning and jailing of Alexei Navalny, accusing Russia's main intelligence agency of attempting to assassinate the opposition leader last year.

The administration is imposing sanctions on seven members of the Russian government and export controls on several business entities involved in biological agent production. The sanctions include Russian officials and a Russian research center that were previously sanctioned by the European Union and United Kingdom in October in connection with Navalny's poisoning.

The sanctions, which are being coordinated with EU partners, come after an intelligence community assessment concluded with "high confidence" that officers of Russia's Federal Security Service used the Novichok nerve agent to poison Navalny in August, Biden administration officials said.

"We're sending a clear signal to Russia that there are consequences for the use of chemical weapons," a senior administration official said. The sanctions are the first to be imposed by the U.S. on Russia over Navalny's poisoning.

The State Department is expanding sanctions on Russia under the 1991 Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act. The Trump administration previously sanctioned Russia under the law in response to the March 2018 poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Great Britain.

The Treasury Department on Tuesday is designating seven senior members of the Russian government: FSB Director Aleksandr Bortnikov, Chief of the Presidential Policy Directorate Andrei Yarin, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Minister of Defense Aleksey Krivoruchko, Deputy Minister of Defense Pavel Popov, Federal Penitentiary Service director Alexander Kalashnikov, and Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov.

The Commerce Department is also adding 14 parties to its entity list because of their involvement in biological agent and chemical agent production, including nine commercial entities in Russia, three in Germany and one in Switzerland.

The sanctions reflect President Biden's effort to confront and penalize Russia for bad behavior while also trying to work with it on matters of mutual concern. The U.S. and Russia agreed to extend the New START nuclear arms treaty with Moscow for a full five years earlier this year.

At the same time, Biden has forcefully condemned Russia's behavior and raised the matter in his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin since taking office in January. His approach has diverged from that of his predecessor, former President Trump, who often spoke warmly of Putin and questioned assessments of Russia's culpability in malign efforts.

The Trump administration did not impose sanctions on Russians in response to Navalny's poisoning, nor did it ever publicly blame Moscow for it.

A senior administration official said:

"Our goal is to have a relationship with Russia that is predictable and stable. Where there are opportunities for it to be constructive, and it is in our interest, we intend to pursue them. Given Russia's conduct in recent years, there will also undoubtedly be adversarial elements and we will not shy away from those. The United States is neither trying to reset our relations with Russia nor are we seeking to escalate."

Comment: US actions, however, say something else.

Confronting Russia will be a challenge for Biden, and it is unlikely the actions taken Tuesday will in any way alter Moscow's behavior.

Members of Congress from both parties welcomed the news as a step toward holding Russia accountable for its behavior. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) weighed in:

"These designations mark an important first step in ensuring we once again stand with our allies against Kremlin aggression and for the international norms against chemical weapons. However, substantial work remains in restricting the ability of corrupt Russian actors to continue accessing the U.S. financial system and I expect the administration to take additional measures to shore up our financial defenses against dirty Russian money."

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he supported the sanctions, but called on the Biden administration to "fully" implement sanctions related to Russia's construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline "in order to send an unmistakably strong message to the Kremlin."

The EU and U.K. last October imposed sanctions targeting six Russian officials and a Russian research center, the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology; the U.S. actions on Tuesday will match those taken by EU partners.

The EU is also expected to announce sanctions on four individuals on Tuesday, two of whom the U.S. intends to sanction and two of whom have already been subject to sanctions in the U.S.

The Biden administration has undertaken a sweeping review of Russian behavior, including the treatment of Navalny and also its involvement in the SolarWinds hack, election meddling efforts and alleged bounties on U.S. service members in Afghanistan.

Comment: All accused; none proven.

An administration official told reporters that more actions would be forthcoming around each of these issues "in the coming weeks," stressing that there would be "more to come."

The Washington Post reported last month that the Biden administration was planning to sanction Russia for the breach of at least nine federal agencies and 100 private sector companies that has become known as the SolarWinds hack.

Germany, France and Sweden, as well as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons global chemical watchdog, judged last year that Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent.

Navalny recovered from the August attack in Germany and returned to Russia in January. He was swiftly jailed and sentenced by a Russian court to a 32-month prison term for violating the terms of his probation.

The U.S. and its European partners have condemned Navalny's jailing as politically motivated and demanded his release. The international community has also denounced Russia's imprisonment of protesters who have demonstrated in support of Navalny and against the Kremlin's actions.

"We reiterate our call for the Russian government to immediately and unconditionally release Mr. Navalny," a senior administration official said Tuesday.

Comment: Et tu Brussels?

Brussels has unveiled a list of officials it claims are responsible for the detention of opposition figure Alexey Navalny and "human rights violations" during the policing of subsequent protests, in sanctions announced on Tuesday.

The individuals will now face economic and diplomatic measures from the European Union. The group includes Alexander Kalashnikov, the director of Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service, which was responsible for enforcing Navalny's arrest after he lost contact with probation officers while serving a suspended sentence for fraud.

Also on the list is Alexander Bastrykin, the chairman of the national Investigative Committee, which is charged with probing serious crimes. According to Eurocrats, "he is responsible for serious human rights violations in Russia, including arbitrary arrests and detentions."

Igor Krasnov, the country's prosecutor general, will similarly face sanctions for having "supported the request by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service to convert the suspended sentence imposed on Alexey Navalny in a case of alleged fraud to a prison sentence."

The fourth name included on the list is Viktor Zolotov, the director of the National Guard, which was deployed to police pro-Navalny demonstrations that took place in cities across Russia over the course of two consecutive weekends in January. The EU decision cites alleged aggression by authorities against journalists, "including Meduza's correspondent Kristina Safronova, who was hit by [a riot police] officer, and Novaya Gazeta's journalist Yelizaveta Kirpanova, who was hit on the head with a truncheon leaving her bleeding."

Earlier on Tuesday, in response to reports that Brussels and Washington would soon unveil sanctions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Moscow would respond in kind. According to him, the Western measures are:

"illegitimate and unilateral, of the kind our American colleagues, and the EU members who follow their example, almost always resort to without any reason. We will react unequivocally. Nobody has cancelled one of the main rules of diplomacy - reciprocity."

The escalation, Lavrov argued, was because

"there is nothing to show in order to substantiate their claims about Navalny's poisoning, when all those who treated him are carefully hiding facts that would help us to understand what happened to him.

"In parallel, instead of honestly co-operating and working transparently, they begin to punish us... then, in my opinion, this doesn't honor anyone making these decisions."

On Monday, Lavrov's deputy, Alexander Grushko, told journalists that "there will, of course, be a reaction from our side." However, he cautioned that until the content of Western sanctions was made public, there was no point "trying to read the tea leaves."

It is expected that Washington will also release details of its own sanctions package later on Tuesday.