The British government has sanctioned seven individuals and two Russian scientific research institutes, which it accuses of being involved in the murder of opposition politician Alexei Navalny and a nerve agent attack in the English town of Salisbury in 2018.
The UK sanctions target SC Signal, a Russian state scientific research institute, and GNIII VM (The State Research Institute of Military Medicine).
Among the individuals targeted are Vladimir Kondratyev, who co-authored a paper on the testing of epibatidine, Andrei Antokhin, and Viktor Taranchenko, who both conducted research on novichok.
The others sanctioned are Artur Zhirov, Aleksandr Makhlay, and Ivan Kravstov, who all allegedly work at SC Signal, Sergei Chepur from GNIII VM, and Vladimir Kondratyev, director of the State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology, which the UK sanctioned in October 2020.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the individuals had legal representatives who could comment on their behalf.
Related Stories
“These new measures directly hit two leading scientific research centers and key individuals involved in the development and production of toxic chemicals for purposes prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC],” the Foreign Office said.
‘Reckless’ Russia
The new sanctions were published on the eve of the NATO summit in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and the British government said it would be joining its allies in tackling an “increasingly reckless and dangerous Russia.”
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Russia’s alleged use of chemical weapons was a “sickening violation” of international law and a threat to global security.
“From the use of Novichok nerve agents in Salisbury to Epibatidine in Siberia, poisoning Dawn Sturgess and Alexei Navalny, Russia continues to use barbaric tools to inflict death and suffering on innocent civilians, including in Ukraine,” Cooper said.
The Russian embassy in London said in a July 6 post on Telegram that the “stale allegations” were slanderous.
“We categorically reject these allegations. Russia strictly adheres to the norms of international law, including the CWC provisions,” it stated.
“International inspections have confirmed that the Russian Armed Forces do not possess chemical weapons.”
The embassy said the British government’s claims about the use of Novichok in the Salisbury attack were used “as proof of an imaginary ‘Russian threat.’”
“The aim is to intensify confrontation with Russia and to justify unpopular decisions at the expense of the British public,” the embassy said. “The epibatidine story is following the same pattern: loud allegations without a shred of evidence.”
Six years earlier, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence agent who had defected to Britain, was targeted at his home in Salisbury.
A public inquiry produced a report in December 2025 that found Russian agents had smeared the nerve agent Novichok on the door handle of his home. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, who had been visiting from Moscow, were later found ill on a bench.
They were both hospitalized but survived and recovered, while Sturgess was killed.
The report found that the nerve agent was in the perfume bottle, which had been thrown away in a trash bin in Salisbury after Skripal was targeted. Sturgess’s boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, had then found it and gifted it to her, unaware of its true contents.
Britain says it has sanctioned 3,400 individuals and organizations in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.