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EU Blacklists Six Kremlin Officials for Navalny Poisoning, Britain Follows Suit

By Koos Couvée

The European Union sanctioned six senior Russian officials and a state-run research institute Thursday in response to the poisoning of a political opposition leader in August with Novichok, a globally banned nerve agent. In a 6-page regulation, officials imposed asset freezes and travel bans under the EU's chemical weapons sanctions regime on Aleksandr Vasilievich Bortnikov, head of Russia's domestic spy agency, the FSB, Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff in the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and four other Kremlin officials. "This toxic agent [Novichok] is accessible only to state authorities in the Russian Federation," EU officials...

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