“That’s enough to say,” the official added, “we will not stand idly by in the face of these human rights violations.”
The people familiar with Navalny’s poisoning by Russian security forces in August last year and his recent prison sentence in Moscow were considered urgent enough to justify a reaction. with the internal discussions.
Several Russian experts have said that the US should not wait to respond, especially not after a Russian court paved the way for the transport of Navalny to a penal colony last week.
“It is good that they are doing this broader review, but as far as Navalny is concerned, they need to act sooner,” said Daniel Fried, who served as State Assistant to the State Department from 2005 to 2009.
‘I do not think we can stop [Russian President] “Putin to send Navalny to a penal colony,” Fried said. “But by acting quickly now, it is at least according to Putin’s calculation that the United States is prepared to act.”
Navalny, 44, was poisoned last August with the nerve agent Novichok, a deadly substance considered by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to be a banned chemical weapon. The Kremlin denies involvement, but the foreign ministry openly attributed the attack to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in December. After months of treatment in Germany, Navalny recovered and flew home to Moscow, where he was immediately arrested for violating the terms of a trial agreement. He was sentenced earlier this month to nearly three years in prison, causing massive protests across Russia and condemning the international community.
This is not the first time that Russian security forces have tried to assassinate Putin’s enemies with Novichok. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer who served as a dual agent for the British, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned with the drug in March 2018 in England. In December, Navalny misled an FSB agent to describe the conspiracy against him, which involved Novichok being planted in the underwear of the opposition leader.
While the broader review of the National Security Council in Russia has yet to be completed, the Biden administration is not starting over the Navalny issue from scratch – it inherited a comprehensive sanctions package from the previous government, which was handed over during the transition process, two said the people familiar with the transition.
The package proposed three types of sanctions: the sanctions of the Magnitsky Act against the individuals detained by Navalny; sanctions under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Act 1991 (CBW Act); and sanctions under Executive Order 13382 – which “are aimed at freezing the assets of distributors of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters,” according to the State Department. The Trump sanctions package also suggested that certain Russian officials’ visas be revoked and that the export of certain dual-use items to Russia that could be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction be restricted.
It is not clear why the sanctions proposal, which according to former officials was ready in early January, came to a halt at the end of Trump’s term. But the former president was notoriously reluctant to punish the Kremlin or confront Vladimir Putin directly, and the sanctions package would have required his approval.
No matter how the new government responds, the exact blueprint is unlikely to be used by Trump’s national security team. The current National Security Council considers the package to be excessively one-sided and not in line with Biden’s commitment to work more closely with US partners on major foreign policy measures.
Yet the US has lagged behind these allies. In response to Navalny’s poisoning last year, the European Union approved six Russians and a state-run scientific institute in October and announced this week that it intends to punish four additional Russian officials over Navalny’s treatment.
Ryan Tully, who served in the last six months of the Trump administration as senior director of European and Russian affairs at the NSC, said US sanctions would be an important next step – along with the termination of Nord Stream 2, ‘ an export gas pipeline running from Russia to Europe across the Baltic Sea that Biden has so far resisted imposing further sanctions. Germany in particular is positive about Nord Stream 2, which is hampering multilateral action, especially as the US seeks to restore relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after strained relations in the Trump era.
“Sanctioning of Russia by means of the CBW Act, Magnitsky Act and / or EO 13382 for the poisoning of Alexei Navalny is an important step in the sense that it strengthens the global norm against the use of chemical weapons,” Tully said. said. “Ultimately, however, these instruments will not change Putin’s calculation or behavior. Placing a stake in the heart of Nord Stream 2 can and will drain billions from Putin’s coffers. ”