The European Union is preparing to announce a new round of sanctions targeting Russian officials who were allegedly involved in the poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
Germany and France announced last week that they were proposing measures that would target individuals who were “responsible for this crime and this violation of international law, as well as an institution that is involved in the novichok programme,” the Financial Times reported.
“This cannot remain without consequences,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters as he arrived in Luxembourg for the meeting to discuss sanctions.
The statement said the attack on Navalny “undermine[d] the fundamental principles of democracy and pluralism,” comparing the incident to the 2018 attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom. That incident also was met with international sanctions. The United States alone expelled 60 Russian officials in coordination with two dozen other countries.
Last Tuesday, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international organization that works to eliminate the use of chemical weapons, announced that biomarkers with “similar structural characteristics” to a Soviet-era nerve agent were found in samples of Navalny’s blood and urine, confirming conclusions from labs in Germany, France, and Sweden.
The Kremlin critic was hospitalized in Serbia on Aug. 20 after falling ill and losing consciousness while on a plane. He was transferred to a hospital in Germany two days later after Russian authorities refused to release him. Navalny said he believes that he was poisoned with a cup of tea at the airport before the flight departed.
France and Germany believe that the poisoning “could only have happened with the involvement of Russian authorities,” according to the Deutsche Press-Agentur.
German officials said that sanctions would be focused on specific individuals and could include travel bans and asset freezes, according to the Financial Times. They emphasized, however, that no sanctions related to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be considered.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the proceedings. In a Monday Twitter post, the Russian Embassy in the U.K. said, “EU is acting without trial. We are asked to carry out an investigation, yet they refuse to present any facts and ignore our official requests. Another #highlylikely case with total disrespect for international law.”
FM #Lavrov on anti-Russian sanctions due to #Navalny incident: EU is acting without trial. We are asked to carry out an investigation, yet they refuse to present any facts and ignore our official requests. Another #highlylikely case with total disrespect for international law. pic.twitter.com/e9J4clsVhs
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) October 12, 2020
The rapidity with which the European Union has considered sanctions suggests “a hardening of the bloc’s diplomacy towards Moscow,” according to NBC News. The 2018 sanctions following Skripal’s poisoning took nearly a year to materialize.
Alexander Schallenberg, the foreign minister of Austria, one of Russia’s closest allies in the EU, said that after the Navalny incident, there could be no “return to business as usual.”
