Britain imposed sanctions on Monday against nine Russian individuals and entities that it stated were involved in developing chemical weapons, including those used in the poisonings of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal.
The sanctions were announced by the Foreign Office and target seven individuals and two scientific institutes. The U.K. government asserts these parties were involved in the creation of the epibatidine toxin used to poison Navalny in an Arctic penal colony in 2024, and the Novichok nerve agent used in the 2018 Salisbury attack on Skripal and his daughter. The Salisbury incident resulted in serious illness for both victims and the death of local resident Dawn Sturgess.
Among those sanctioned are the Russian state scientific research institute SC Signal and GNIII VM, the State Scientific Research and Testing Institute for Military Medicine, along with several senior officials and scientists.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper stated that "Russia’s repeated use of chemical weapons is a sickening violation of international law and a direct threat to global security."
In a separate but related development on the same day, Britain's defense ministry reported that UK F-35 fighter jets intercepted a Russian Bear-F maritime patrol aircraft that approached a British carrier strike group in the Norwegian Sea. HMS Prince of Wales and other British vessels are currently operating in the Arctic as part of NATO operations.
The defense ministry detailed that on Thursday, the Russian aircraft passed at low altitude and in close proximity to HMS Prince of Wales, dropping a number of sonobuoys, which are monitoring devices used to detect submarines. The ministry described this activity as "unsafe and unprofessional."