LONDON, April 21. /TASS/. The UK imposed sanctions against five Russians in connection with the verdict that the Moscow City Court handed down to publicist Vladimir Kara-Murza (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) on Monday, per a statement posted on the website of the UK Foreign Office.
"Today, the UK is sanctioning Elena Lenskaya - a judge who approved Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest, along with Denis Kolesnikov and Andrei Zadachin - the investigators involved in the arrest of Mr. Kara-Murza," the statement says.
The British Foreign Office calls the case against Kara-Murza "politically-motivated" and characterizes it as part of a state campaign allegedly aimed at depriving Russians of access to the truth about the conflict in Ukraine and intimidating those who criticize it.
The sanctions list also included FSB officers Konstantin Kudryavtsev and Alexander Samofal, who allegedly followed Kara-Murza and could have been involved in what the British Foreign Office calls attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017. To justify its decision, the UK Foreign Office states that the Russian security forces are involved in "violation of Mr. Kara-Murza’s right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."
In his statement, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly recalled that Kara-Murza is a UK citizen and London will continue to support him and his family. "I call on Russia to release him immediately and unconditionally," Cleverly said.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed the statements by the UK, US and Canadian ambassadors, which they made following the sentencing of Kara-Murza (designated as a foreign agent), as direct meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. The diplomat said Moscow regarded UK Ambassador Deborah Bronnert’s remarks, which she made following the Kara-Murza verdict, as unacceptable and warned London against politicizing international human rights issues. Zakharova also stated that the demands of the US and Canadian ambassadors to free Kara-Murza were "the height of cynicism" at a time when their home countries were shamelessly violating human rights and persecuting dissenters.
On Monday, 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").