Biden to sanction Russia over Navalny poisoning, jailing

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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. Continue reading.

British man thought he was giving perfume to his girlfriend; it was a Russian nerve agent

The following article by Ruby Mellen with the Washington Post was posted on the Star Tribune website July 27, 2018:

Russian-made Novichok found in bottle in England.

A specialist team member in a protective suit leaves the front entrance of John Baker House for homeless people. Credit: Matt Dunham, AP

A specialist team member in a police protective suit leaves the front entrance of John Baker House for homeless people on Rollestone Street in Salisbury, England, Friday, July 6, 2018. British police are scouring sections of Salisbury and Amesbury in southwest England, searching for a container feared to be contaminated with traces of the deadly nerve agent Novichok.

When Charlie Rowley found a sealed box containing a bottle of perfume on the ground in the southern English town of Amesbury, he figured it would make a great gift for his girlfriend of two years, Dawn Sturgess.

He gave it to her on June 30, never imagining that the bottle was filled with a poisonous nerve agent called Novichok, a Russian-made chemical weapon the country reserves for some of its deadliest attacks.

View the complete article here.