US to Impose Sanctions on Russia over Poisoning

The United States is soon going to impose sanctions on Russia on the issue of poisoning the former Russian agent and his daughter in the UK in March this year, following a chemical and biological warfare law.

The US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert has said that the US has already made the decision accusing Russia of violating the international law. If everything goes as planned sanctions will be forced into effect from 22nd August 2018.

United Kingdom government has welcomed the move by the US. In an official statement released by UK government, a spokesperson said, “The strong international response to the use of a chemical weapon on the streets of Salisbury sends an unequivocal message to Russia that its provocative, reckless behaviour will not go unchallenged.”

Meanwhile reacting on this decision of the US, Dmitry Polyanskiy, first Deputy Representative of Russia to the UN, dismissed the sanctions in a tweet, “The Theater of absurd continues. No proofs, no clues, no logic, no presumption of innocence, just highly-likelies. Only one rule: blame everything on Russia, no matter how absurd and fake it is. Let us welcome the United Sanctions of America!”

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia Skripal were hospitalized after a nerve-agent attack in March. Yulia Skripal was discharged from the hospital in April and her father was discharged in the month of May. Though Russia has always denied its involvement in this incident.

Immediately after the attack, the United States joined other European countries in blaming Moscow for the attack, but the US administration had never issued any formal determination on sanctions under decade-old US law on chemical weapons.

If the sanctions were imposed then the first set of targets are on the items that the US exports to Russia, which could have military uses. These are sensitive goods, such as on selling arms to Russia.

The US also allowed Russia to decide and said that if Russia agrees and give assurances that it would not use chemical weapons in the future and agrees to on-site inspections by the United Nations, the US may think of withdrawing the sanction and not implement the second round of sanctions.

If the second round of sanctions come into force it might be pathetic for Russia, as it is going to downgrade Russia’s diplomatic relations with other countries, suspend state airline Aeroflot operations and will not be allowed to fly to the United States and cutting off nearly all exports and imports.

Sergei Skripal was a former Russian military officer who was convicted of spying for Britain and therefore was poisoned with his daughter, Yulia in Salisbury, England in the month of March this year. It was later found that they were attacked using the nerve agent Novichok, which is developed in the former Soviet Union. But both of them survived. Later in June, two people, a few miles away from the earlier incident, were exposed to the same nerve agent in an incident similar to this and the police believed is linked to Russia. One of them died later. But Moscow has clearly denied involvement in either of the incidents.