LONDON, April 21. /TASS/. The United Kingdom’s new sanctions against five Russian citizens following Monday’s verdict in columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza’s (listed as a foreign agent in Russia) case are illegitimate and legally void, the Russian embassy in London said on Friday.
"We note another unfriendly anti-Russian move by the British authorities who, on April 21, imposed restrictive measures against five Russians in connection with the verdict in the Vladimir Kaza-Murza case," it said. "We consider this demonstrative action as a continuation of flagrant and absolutely unacceptable attempts to meddle in the Russian justice system and influence the verdict already passed by our country’s court. We stress that the UK’s unilateral ‘sanctions,’ which run counter to the principles of international law, are illegitimate and legally void."
The embassy also expressed indignation over the British side spreading "blatant disinformation and groundless accusations against our citizens."
"The use of such methods is further evidence exposing the Russophobic propaganda nature of London’s hostile move," it stressed.
Earlier on Friday, the UK Foreign Office announced sanctions against five more Russian nationals in connection with the verdict in the Kara-Murza case. They are Elena Lenskaya, a judge who approved Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest last spring, Denis Kolesnikov and Andrey Zadachin, the investigators involved in Kara-Murza’s case, and officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Konstantin Kurdyavtsev and Alexander Samofal, who allegedly spied on Kara-Murza and could have been involved in what the UK Foreign Office calls attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017.
On April 17, the Moscow City Court sentenced Kara-Murza to 25 years in a maximum-security prison and a fine of 400,000 rubles ($4,880), banned him from any journalism-related activities for seven years, and ruled that his freedom be limited for six months after his release from incarceration. According to the court ruling, he was found guilty of crimes stipulated under Part 2, Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code (RCC) ("Public Dissemination of Knowingly False Information About the Deployment of the Russian Armed Forces"), Part 1, Article 284.1 of the RCC ("Execution of Activities of a Foreign or International Organization Whose Activity Has Been Declared Undesirable on the Territory of the Russian Federation"), and Article 275 of the RCC ("High Treason").