MOSCOW, February 4. /TASS/. The Kremlin sees a persistent knee-jerk reaction for sanctions by US lawmakers and believes that this sort of sanctions pressure is unacceptable.
"We see a constant knee-jerk reaction by American legislators for sanctions. We believe that such approaches in bilateral relations through the prism of sanctions pressure are unacceptable," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
The press secretary commented on reports that US Senators from both parties submitted a bill to Congress to slap restrictions on Russia over the sentence handed to opposition figure Alexey Navalny. He noted that there would be more discussions on that matter. "Let’s wait and see which way these discussions will go."
A bipartisan group of US senators introduced a bill to the US Congress on sanctions against Russia due to the situation with opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the press service of Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, reported on Wednesday. As the press service noted, the Holding Russia Accountable for Malign Activities Act of 2021 was reintroduced by US Senators Marco Rubio and Chris Coons (a Democrat from Delaware) who were joined by Ben Cardin (a Democrat from Maryland), Mitt Romney (a Republican from Utah), Chris Van-Hollen (a Democrat from Maryland) and Dick Durbin (a Democrat from Illinois). "This bill would impose targeted sanctions against Russian officials complicit in brazen violations of international law including the poisoning and imprisonment of opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny," the statement said.
Navalny saga
Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. Later, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital. On September 2, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeatedly emphasized that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany and pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin. On January 17, Navalny was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport upon arrival from Berlin.
On February 2, Moscow’s Simonovsky District Court replaced Alexey Navalny’s suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher embezzlement case with a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence in a medium-security prison. He will remain at a detention facility until the court’s decision becomes effective.