LONDON, August 21. /TASS/. The British government needs to abandon the line of confrontation towards Russia, otherwise the UK will face Moscow’s tit-for-tat measures, the Russian embassy to London said in a statement released on Saturday, following the new round of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
"We urge, yet again, the British leadership to relinquish unjustified confrontational stance towards our country. There will be adequate and proportionate response to any hostile act," the embassy said.
The Russian diplomats pointed out that "rubber-stamping" sanctions against Moscow, including over the incident with blogger Alexey Navalny, had turned into "a process which is completely detached from actual facts and looks like a formality, a way to ‘mark anniversaries’."
"We have stressed many times the need to share any information on ‘Alexey Navalny poisoning case’, to back up allegations with evidence. It is not quite clear why London has assumed a role of an ultimate arbitrator on this matter. Without any scruples the British authorities make accusations, apportion blame and impose punishment - all by themselves. This is a flagrant violation of the basic norms of administering justice, not to mention interference in internal affairs of another nation," the statement says.
New sanctions
On Friday, London imposed sanctions on seven officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who are believed to be involved in the incident with blogger Alexey Navalny.
The document says that Alexei Sedov, the chief of the FSB service for the protection of the constitutional system and the fight against terrorism, Kirill Vasilyev, Director of the FSB Criminalistics Institute, Stanislav Makshakov, an employee of the FSB Criminalistics Institute, Vladimir Bogdanov, chief of the FSB specialized equipment center, and FSB officers Alexei Alexandrov (also known, according to London, as Frolov), Ivan Spiridonov (or Osipov) and Vladimir Panyaev are sanctioned, which means their bank accounts are frozen and they are barred from entering the country.
It is the second round of sanctions that London has slapped on Russia following the incident with Navalny. Last October, the UK sanctioned six Russian individuals. Among them were First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko and FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov.