Ukraine imposed sanctions against Navalny’s poisoners, whose names were established during the investigation by The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN

At a meeting of the National Security Council of Ukraine, it was decided to impose sanctions against alleged FSB officers involved in the poisoning of the leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny. Previously, the names of these intelligence officers were identified during an investigative journalism conducted by The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN.

About new sanctions announced after the meeting of the NSDC, his secretary Alexei Danilov. “Sanctions have been imposed on seven employees of the Russian Federal Security Service who were directly involved in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. This list is initial, these are the people who have been installed, “said Danilov, whom quotes “Today”. He noted that the list will expand in the future.

At the same time, the NSDC announced the imminent introduction of sanctions in connection with the holding of elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the uncontrolled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as in Crimea. “The overwhelming majority of the sanctions concern the issues that exist today in the occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions – these are elections to the so-called State Duma of the Russian Federation. We are confident that the Russian Federation does not have the right to hold elections in these territories, therefore all participants in this process who take part, members of election commissions, agitators, candidates, all observers who are officials in these elections will be under the sanctions of our country ” – Danilov said at a briefing. His words leads Interfax.

In August, the United Kingdom and the United States imposed similar sanctions for the poisoning of Navalny. According to message The US State Department, Colonel-General Aleksey Sedov, who heads the Second Service of the FSB (Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism), Director of the Institute of Criminalistics Kirill Vasiliev, employees of the Institute of Criminalistics Konstantin Kudryavtsev and Vladimir Panyaev, forensic operatives were included in the “black list” Alexey Alexandrov and Ivan Osipov. In addition, the sanctions list includes Artur Zhirov, the former director of the 27th Scientific Center and a chemical weapons specialist, and Vladimir Bogdanov, head of the FSB Special Technology Center. This Center, according to the US Department of Justice, oversees the activities of the Institute of Forensic Science. The department also believes that Bogdanov had contact with people involved in the poisoning of Navalny before and after the operation.

American sanctions were also imposed on two scientific centers – the Institute of Forensic Science of the FSB and the State Research and Testing Institute of Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense (GNII VM). He cooperates with the 27th scientific center and the 33rd scientific research institute, which were previously accused by the United States of developing chemical weapons in Russia.

The names of the poisoners of Alexei Navalny were established during joint investigation The Insider, Bellingcat and CNN featuring Der Spiegel. As it turned out, the poisoning in Tomsk in August 2020 was already the second attempt, and two months before that, the same FSB officers attempted the life of an oppositionist in Kaliningrad and nearly killed his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, in the process. The key role in the assassination attempt was played by a special unit of the Institute of Forensic Science of the FSB, which used chemical weapons of the Novichok family as a poison.

Later The Insider published confessionary testimony of one of the poisoners, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, who talked to Alexei Navalny (thinking that he was talking to Patrushev’s assistant) and told many details of the assassination attempt. Among other things, he explained that Navalny’s life was saved by the actions of the pilots and the atropine injected by the ambulance, and also clarified that the poison was applied to the panties, and transport police helped the FSB to clear the tracks.