The British Foreign Ministry on December 4 officially announced a series of new sanctions directly targeting the General Department of Intelligence of the Russian General Staff (GRU) and 11 individuals believed to be involved in the agency.
According to the announcement issued from London, the sanctions include freezing all assets discovered at banks in the UK financial system and permanently banning blacklists from entering the UK.
This tough diplomatic decision was directly linked to the tragedy that occurred in July 2018 that killed Ms Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old British citizen.
The latest public investigation conclusion of the British government determined that Ms. Sturgess was an innocent victim in a failed assassination plot. She died after accidentally spraying a liquid on her wrist from a thrown-out bottle of perfume without realizing it contained a Novichok neurotoxine.
British authorities confirmed that this bottle of death spirit was actually the remains dumped after the attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury in March 2018.
Although Mr. Skripal and his son were lucky to survive the poisoning, Ms. Sturgess did not survive due to direct exposure to the dense amount of poison. The UK government has confirmed that Novichok poison originates from Russia and that all of these activities are being directed by the GRU.
However, Russia has always firmly denied all allegations related to the incident. Moscow believes that the evidence presented by the UK is unconvincing and that the entire incident was staged for political purposes to defame the image of Russia.
Russia stressed that these new sanctions are based only on unilateral allegations from the UK without a solid international legal basis.
The Novichok incident has long been a hot spot for tensions in diplomatic relations between Russia and the West. The UK's restart of sanctions based on new investigation results shows that London continues to maintain a tough stance towards Moscow on national security issues.
