The United Kingdom has imposed new sanctions against seven Russians and two organizations: what are the grounds?
6 July 19:08
The United Kingdom has imposed sanctions on seven Russians and two organizations that London believes are involved in the development of chemical weapons, including “Novichok” and epibatidine. This was reported on Monday, July 6, by the UK Foreign Office, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
The restrictions apply to individuals and two organizations—the Moscow-based “Signal” research center and the Russian Ministry of Defense’s State Research Institute of Military Medicine—which, according to UK authorities, participated in the development of “Novichok” and epibatidine. London has linked these substances to the deaths of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and British citizen Dawn Sturgess.
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Sturgess died in 2018 after being poisoned with “Novichok” in Amesbury, UK. Epibatidine was detected by several European laboratories in biological samples from Navalny after his death.
The leadership of the “Signal” research center has been sanctioned
Among the individuals sanctioned are “Signal” director Artur Zhirov, his deputy Andrei Antohin, the center’s chief research fellow Alexander Makhlai, as well as the heads of the first and fourth research departments, Viktor Taranchenko and Ivan Kravtsov.
According to a statement from the UK Foreign Office, the sanctions against the seven Russians include asset freezes, a ban on entering the country, and a prohibition on holding executive positions in British companies. For organizations, the sanctions entail an asset freeze and a ban on their executives participating in the management of British companies.
Earlier, the European Union imposed sanctions against six individuals involved in the creation of the poison that was likely used to poison Alexei Navalny.
The Poisoning and Death of Alexei Navalny
In August 2020, Alexei Navalny lost consciousness aboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, which subsequently made an emergency landing in Omsk, where the politician received first aid. A few days later, he was transferred to the Charité clinic in Berlin, where his treatment and rehabilitation continued.
Experts at a special Bundeswehr laboratory, after conducting a toxicological analysis of Navalny’s samples, detected traces of a nerve agent from the “Novichok” group. Laboratories in Sweden and France, as well as experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, independently reached the same conclusions.
In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia, where he was detained and sentenced to a long prison term. On February 16, 2024, the opposition figure, who was considered the main political rival of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, died suddenly in a Siberian prison colony, where he was serving a long-term sentence.
In February 2026, five European countries reported that the Russian opposition figure had “most likely” died from poisoning with epibatidine — a rare toxin extracted from the skin of the Ecuadorian tree frog. Experts from these countries reached this conclusion independently of one another after analyzing samples of Navalny’s biological material, which his relatives were able to transport to Europe following his death.
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