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A police officer in front of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, before a meeting on the Skripal case, March 21, 2018 (photo illustration). Yuri KADOBNOV / AFP

The United States on Saturday (August 3rd) imposed a new set of sanctions on Russia for the Novitchok attack against former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018 in the United Kingdom.

Washington will oppose any assistance to Moscow " from the international financial institutions ", restrict US banks' access to the Russian sovereign debt market and limit exports of goods and technology to Russia, as has US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

These measures, taken in the name of a 1991 US law on the elimination of chemical and biological weapons, will come into effect " around August 19 ", after notification from the United States Congress. They will remain so for at least 12 months. The law provides that sanctions can only be lifted if Russia demonstrates that it will " no longer use chemical weapons in the future " under the control of international inspectors. This is the second set of US sanctions in this case.

Powerful chemical agent

In 2018, the former Russian double agent and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in a shopping center in Salisbury, in the south of England, and hospitalized in serious condition. London had accused Moscow of being behind this poisoning at Novitchok, a powerful Soviet-style innervating agent, in retaliation for its collaboration with the British intelligence services. The Kremlin had denied.This affair caused a major diplomatic crisis, leading to the expulsion of more than 300 Russian or Western diplomats .

Sergei Skripal , a former officer of the Russian Military Intelligence (GRU), was sentenced in 2006 for " high treason " before receiving an exchange of spies organized between Moscow, London and Washington. Sergei Skripal and his daughter had left the hospital in the following months. Their poisoning was a collateral victim, a woman who died after splashing on what she thought was a perfume, contained in a bottle picked up by her companion.

( With AFP )

► See also: Skripal case: one year after poisoning, still so many gray areas