It was a series of steps announced by the new government on Tuesday in its first important step against Moscow since Joe Biden became president. Senior officials stressed that the steps are being taken in cooperation with allies such as the European Union, which also announced sanctions on Tuesday.
One senior administration official referred to the poisoning of Navalny in August 2020 as an attempted assassination. Another one revealed that the intelligence community had judged with great confidence that the Russian security service, the FSB, had poisoned the opposition leader with the nerve agent Novichok.
In response to this action, senior administrative officials said on Tuesday in a call to reporters that the Treasury Department was approving seven senior members of the Russian government. The Foreign Office “reflects” previous EU and UK sanctions and extends sanctions under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Act (CBW Act) first introduced due to the poisoning of Russia, the former spy Sergei Skripal in the UK, one official said.
The Department of Commerce will add 14 parties to the list of entities for their involvement in “activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests,” another official said. “These parties are specifically all involved in the production and chemical production of biological agents.”
“It is clear … that Russian officials have targeted Mr Navalny for his activism and attempts to reveal uncomfortable truths about the corruption of Russian officials and to give voice to the legal grievances of Russian citizens with their government and its policies, “said one of the officials. said. “We are urging our authorities to send a clear signal that Russia’s use of chemical weapons and the violation of its international human rights obligations are having serious consequences.”
“We retain the ability to go further, and you will know, depending on our assessment of Russian behavior going forward, we will exercise further options as we should,” another official said.
Administration officials did not name the targets of their sanctions on the call, but one official said the list would include “some of those named by Navalny supporters.” Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation (FBC) said at the end of January it had submitted a list of 35 people in a letter addressed to Biden, with eight individuals named as priorities for sanctions. These names included Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Russian health minister Mikhail Murashko.
Officials stressed that the US sanctions on Navalny poisoning were only the first in a series of reactions to Russian action, with ‘more to come’ in various areas, including the cyber attack by SolarWinds.
Senior officials in the call with reporters made it clear that their approach to Russia would be a break from that of former President Donald Trump, who was criticized for being too soft on Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The tone and content of our talks with Russia and our talks on Russia will be very different from what you saw in the previous government,” said one of the officials.
The senior administration official said the US did not want to ‘restore’ or increase its relationship with Russia. Instead, the Biden government’s goal is to have a ‘predictable and stable’ relationship.
In addition to the poisoning of Navalny, the Biden government is conducting a wide-ranging review of Russian atrocities, ranging from the massive violation of SolarWinds to alleged abundance of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to interference in the U.S. election.
“We are looking at all of these things, and I can confidently say that we will take the necessary steps as we see fit to make it clear that this behavior is unacceptable to us, and we will do so with our allies and partners, Foreign Secretary Tony Blinken said in an interview with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that was broadcast on Tuesday.
Officials have also repeatedly stressed that their Navalny response was coordinated with allies – a detail that they believe represents a different change from the often one-sided actions taken by the Trump administration.
The EU on Tuesday imposed sanctions on four Russian nationals linked to the poisoning of Navalny.
CNN’s Nicole Gaouette, Jeremy Diamond, Zahra Ullah, Matthew Chance, Anna Chernova and James Frater contributed to this report.