While condemnations emanating from Western chancelleries have followed one another since the death of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny in prison on Friday, the United States will adopt a series of “major sanctions” against Moscow on Friday, the White House announced on Tuesday.
“At President Biden's initiative, we will announce a set of major sanctions on Friday to hold Russia accountable for what happened to Mr. Navalny,” said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. White House.
The death of Alexei Navalny, 47, in a remote Arctic prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence after surviving a poisoning in 2020 for which he blamed the Kremlin, was announced on Friday.
He died after three years of detention.
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According to John Kirby, “whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it is clear that President Putin and his government are responsible.”
The spokesperson called for “full transparency from the Russian government” over the circumstances of Navalny’s death.
John Kirby specified that these new sanctions also responded to “all the actions (of Moscow) part of this cruel and brutal war which has raged for two years” in Ukraine.
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The European Union, for its part, summoned Russia's charge d'affaires in Brussels, Kirill Logvinov, on Tuesday in reaction to the death of the Russian opponent.
The director general of the European External Action Service in charge of Russia, Michael Siebert, “called on Russia to authorize an independent and transparent international investigation” into the death of the opponent and “urged Russia to hand over the body of the deceased to his family without further delay.
Ukraine lacks support
The United States and its allies have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2022, including restrictions in the technological and financial fields or on Russian oil resources.
Russia took the town of Avdiivka, near Donetsk (eastern Ukraine) this weekend, while the Ukrainian army is forced to save its ammunition in the face of uncertainties concerning a tranche of American aid of 60 billion dollars blocked in Congress by Republicans close to Donald Trump.
The latter believes that any aid to Ukraine is useless since, according to him, Russia will end up winning the war, while President Joe Biden has been pushing for weeks for this new package to be adopted by Congress.
The Ukrainian withdrawal from Avdiivka is a “wise decision”, said John Kirby.
“If the Ukrainians are not better supplied with ammunition, the withdrawal from Avdiivka could have wider consequences,” he warned.