China: U.S. and UK sanctions against Russia over Navalny’s poisoning are unfair
The Chinese authorities consider the new US sanctions against Russia due to the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, unfair, said the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin.
"The decision [on sanctions] was made before the true state of affairs was determined. This is unfair," he said at a briefing.
The situation with Navalny is "an exclusively domestic political issue," Wang Wenbin said, adding that "there are no sufficient grounds for these unilateral sanctions against Russia."
On Friday, the UK and the Us announced the expansion of sanctions due to the situation with Navalny, who in August last year was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent, and after returning to Russia was detained and sentenced for at least 2.5 years.
Seven Russian FSB officers fell under the British sanctions which provide for freezing of bank accounts and entry ban.
Among them are the head of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order and The Fight against Terrorism, Alexei Sedov, the director of the FSB Criminalistics Institute, Kirill Vasiliev, an employee of the FSB Criminalistics Institute, Stanislav Makshakov, the head of the FSB Center for Special Equipment, Vladimir Bogdanov, also FSB officers Alexei Alexandrov (also known, according to the British side, under the name Frolov), Ivan Osipov (Spiridonov) and Vladimir Panyaev.
The US authorities-imposed sanctions against nine citizens of the Russian Federation and four organizations involved in the poisoning of Navalny.
The FSB Criminalistics Institute and the State Research Testing Institute of Military Medicine, as well as the 33rd Central Research Testing Institute and the 27th Scientific Center of the Russian Ministry of Defense fell under the U.S. sanctions.
Personal sanctions are imposed against the head of the FSB Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order and Combating Terrorism, Alexei Sedov, the director of the Institute of Criminalistics, Kirill Vasiliev, employees of the FSB Institute of Criminalistics,Stanislav Makshakov and Konstantin Kudryavtsev, the head of the FSB Center for Special Equipment, Vladimir Bogdanov, FSB officers Alexei Alexandrov, Ivan Osipov and Vladimir Panyaev, as well as Arthur Zhirov. He, according to the statement, was previously the director of the 27th Scientific Center of the Russian Defense Ministry.