OTTAWA, March 24. /TASS/. The Canadian government has introduced sanctions against nine Russian officials over the situation around blogger Alexey Navalny, a statement by the Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau reads.

The sanctions list includes Russia’s FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia Sergei Kiriyenko, Director of the National Guard Viktor Zolotov, Chief of the Presidential Domestic Policy Directorate Andrei Yarin, Deputy Defense Ministers Alexei Krivoruchko and Pavel Popov, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service Alexander Kalashnikov and Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, and Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in the Siberian Federal District Sergei Menyailo.

The sanctions are "part of a concerted diplomatic effort to bring pressure on senior figures in Russia’s administration" in response to the incident with Alexey Navalny, the statement notes. "These actions are in line with measures previously taken by the European Union and the United States," the announcement says.

"Canada stands with the people of Russia in their quest to exercise their rights to freely express themselves and to gather peacefully without fearing reprisals. Canada will continue to work in a coordinated manner with allies and partners to prepare and implement effective and unified measures to condemn the worrying human rights trends in Russia," the statement stresses.

Navalny incident

Alexey Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20, 2020 after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. He fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital. On September 22, Navalny was discharged from the hospital.

On September 2, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had concluded that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. According to Germany, these findings were confirmed by laboratories in France and Sweden.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.

Navalny was detained on his return to Moscow on January 17. On February 2, Moscow’s Simonovsky Court replaced Navalny’s three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case with real jail time due to multiple probation violations. On February 20, the Moscow City Court upheld this decision.