Days after holding a high-profile summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Joe Biden is preparing to slap fresh sanctions against Russia over the alleged poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
"We are preparing another package of sanctions to apply in this case as well," , National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
'Getting the right Targets'
"It will come as soon as we have developed the packages to ensure that we are getting the right targets. And when we do that, we will impose further sanctions with respect to chemical weapons," Sullivan added during an interview with CNN.
US-Russia relations have been deteriorating for years, and the summit between the leaders did not help the situation normalize drastically. Though the leaders had agreed on on holding talks on cybersecurity and arms control, the summit discussions were roiled by vastly differing views on topics like human rights, the Ukraine problem and spying charges.
The ties between the countries had deteriorated significantly when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Devastating Consequences
During the summit, Biden had made it clear that there would be "devastating" consequences for Russia if jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny died.
Biden had said after the summit that he raised human rights issues because it was in the "DNA" of the United States.
On his part, Putin said Washington was in no position to lecture Moscow on rights. He added that the US witnessed chaos over popular movements like the Black Lives Matter and that he was trying to avoid similar hiccups in his country.
"What we saw was disorder, disruption, violations of the law, etc. We feel sympathy for the United States of America, but we don't want that to happen on our territory and we'll do our utmost in order to not allow it to happen," Putin said.
The Biden administration had announced multiple sanctions against Russia in March this year. The fresh sanctions will target Russian individuals and entities over the alleged poisoning of Navalny.
According to the US intelligence apparatus, Navalny was poisoned with Novichok by Russia's Federal Security Service in August 2020.
