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U.S. and UK sanction FSB operatives implicated in Alexey Navalny’s poisoning

Source: UK Government

The UK authorities have imposed sanctions on seven individuals believed to be the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives implicated in the August 2020 poisoning of opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

According to the British government’s website, the sanctions list includes:

  • The FSB’s Constitutional Protection Service chief Alexey Sedov;
  • The FSB’s Criminalistics Institute director Kirill Vasilyev;
  • The FSB’s Scientific and Technical Service deputy director Vladimir Bogdanov;
  • FSB operatives Alexey Alexandrov, Ivan Osipov, Ivan Spiridonov, and Vladimir Panyaev.

The names of most of these individuals were mentioned in a joint investigation into Navalny’s poisoning published by The Insider and Bellingcat in December 2020.

Konstantin Kudryavtsev — an alleged FSB operative who detailed the Kremlin’s attempt to poison Navalny during a phone call with Alexey Navalny himself — isn’t included on the sanctions list.

Update. Later in the day on August 20, the U.S. Treasury Department also announced sanctions against nine individuals and two Russian Defense Ministry research institutes linked to Navalny’s poisoning. In addition to the seven FSB operatives named above, the U.S. also sanctioned FSB agent Konstantin Kudryavtsev and the former director of the Russian Defense Ministry’s 27th Scientific Center Artur Zhirov.

Alexey Navalny was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow when he fell violently ill on August 20, 2020. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was hospitalized in a coma; two days later he was transferred to Germany for treatment. German officials later confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent. Russia denies any involvement in the poisoning, though Navalny says he holds Vladimir Putin directly responsible for the nerve-agent attack.

Navalny was arrested immediately upon returning to Russia from Germany in January 2021. In February, a Moscow court revoked his suspended sentence in the “Yves Rocher” case and sentenced him to time in prison. Navalny is now serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence in a penal colony in Russia’s Vladimir region. The EU and the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian officials linked to Navalny’s persecution in March 2021.

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