US bares new sanctions vs Russia
Credit to Author: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE| Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2019 19:07:57 +0000
SYDNEY: A new round of sanctions were imposed on Moscow Saturday by the United States over the 2018 poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.
Russian spies have been blamed for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March last year using the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok.
The two survived the attack, but a British woman later died after her partner picked up a discarded perfume bottle investigators believe was used to carry the Novichok.
Washington said Saturday it would oppose “the extension of any loan or financial or technical assistance to Russia” by international financial institutions and put limits on US banks from purchasing Russian sovereign debt, US
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.
The US would also limit the export of goods and technology to Russia that could be used in the country’s chemical and biological arms programs, Ortagus said.
She added that the measures could prevent Russia from accessing “billions of dollars of bilateral commercial activity with the United States.”
The sanctions will come into effect following a 15-day congressional notification period — around August 19 — and will remain in place for a minimum 12 months, according to the US State Department.
The Salisbury attack, the first offensive use of chemical weapons in Europe since World War II, caused an international outcry and prompted a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western nations including the US.
London says the attempted assassination was “almost certainly” approved by Moscow and that Russians Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun were behind the killing.
However, the pair have never been tried and Lugovoi has since become a lawmaker in Russia.
Moscow denies involvement in the poisoning and has offered numerous and varied alternative explanations and counter-accusations.
Skripal, a former officer with the GRU, the Armed Forces of Russia, was found guilty in 2006 of “high treason” before being traded in a spy exchange between Moscow, London and Washington.