MADRID, August 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The United States Department of the Treasury has announced new sanctions this Thursday against four people who collaborated with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and played a key role in poisoning Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalni with a Novichok-type nerve agent in the summer of 2020.

“The assassination attempt on Alexei Navalni in 2020 represents the Kremlin’s disregard for human rights, and we will continue to use the authorities at our disposal to hold the Kremlin executioners accountable,” the Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism said in a statement. , Brian E. Nelson.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the United States Department of State, Matthew Miller, again condemned this Thursday in a statement a sentence of 19 years in prison for extremism against Russia’s opponents, which he called “injustice”. “We are renewing our call for their immediate release,” he assured.

In particular, Washington has added to its ‘black list’ Alexei Alexandrovich Alexandrov, an agent of the Criminalistic Institute of the FSB, “one of the main ones” responsible for poisoning Russia’s opponents and who, in addition, spied on activist Nikita Isaev, who died , in suspicious condition, from a heart attack during a train journey in 2019.

Similarly, the sanctions also apply to Konstantin Kudriavtsev, who is also a member of the aforementioned Institute and admitted to his participation in the clean-up operation after Navalni was poisoned with a nerve agent.

Kudriavtsev was responsible for spying on Russian opponent and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced by a Moscow court to 25 years in prison for various crimes, including high treason, a sentence harshly criticized by the international community.

Finally, the United States has sanctioned Ivan Vladimirovich Osipov, who was part of the team to carry out the poisoning, and Vladimir Alexandrovich Panyaev, who was tasked with spying on Navalni on several occasions.

The Russian opponent fell seriously ill in August 2020 while returning on a flight back to Moscow after campaigning in Tomsk and Novosibirsk, causing an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was admitted to the ICU in a coma on respiratory support.

Later, he was evacuated on a medical plane chartered by the NGO Cinema for Peace to Berlin, where he remains in the intensive care unit in a coma. Medical staff later confirmed in a report that Navalni was poisoned with Novichok, a chemical that was used in 2018 against former agent Sergei Skripal in the UK and which traces back to Russia, which denied this.