US Slaps New Sanctions on Russia for 2018 Nerve Agent Attack

Daily Signal:

ABOARD A U.S. AIR FORCE AIRCRAFT—The U.S. has announced a new round of sanctions on Russia for its use of a chemical weapon in 2018 during an attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil.

In the March 2018 attack in the town of Salisbury in the United Kingdom, two Russian hitmen used a nerve agent called Novichok in a failed hit on Skripal, who had defected to the U.K. Skripal survived, but another woman named Dawn Sturgess, 44, later died after exposure to the nerve agent.

“This act endangered thousands of lives in Salisbury and Amesbury, and caused the hospitalization of the Skripals, a British police officer, and two civilians, one of whom subsequently died from her exposure,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement issued Saturday to journalists flying with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from Thailand to Australia.

The sanctions will fall under the 1991 Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act. The measure will restrict Russia’s access to U.S. banking and the U.S. market for issuance of non-ruble denominated debt and debt financing, as well as access to items made in the U.S. that are vital to Russia’s chemical and biological weapons program. more