The United States will launch a new program to train foreign partners to counter Russian influence. This is reported by RT with reference to the document of the US State Department.
The new measure concerns weapons of mass destruction that Russia allegedly used in the incident with Alexei Navalny and former GRU officer Sergei Skripal.
The program, worth up to $ 3.5 million, will begin in October 2021. Its goal is to effectively counteract the “harmful Russian influence” by “increasing the capacity of foreign partners to identify and respond to actions by Russia that undermine the norms and regimes of non-proliferation” of hardly detectable substances of mass destruction.
The authors of the document emphasize that the Russian Federation has more than once used such means when attempting to assassinate oppositionists, dissidents, fugitives and even foreign citizens. As noted by RT, there is no specific evidence for this statement.
Earlier, on October 15, the European Union imposed sanctions against six Russians over the situation with Navalny. In particular, the FSB director Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian president's internal policy department Andrei Yarin, the Russian deputy defense ministers Alexei Krivoruchko and Pavel Popov, as well as the presidential envoy to the Siberian federal district, Sergei Menyailo, fell under the restrictions. These persons are prohibited from entering the territory of the European Union, their financial assets in European banks are frozen.
In addition, sanctions were imposed on the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT) – European entrepreneurs are prohibited from maintaining any relationship with it.
Navalny's health sharply deteriorated on the morning of August 20 during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. On August 22, the oppositionist was taken to a Berlin clinic. German experts said that traces of a substance from the Novichok group were found in his body. At the same time, Russian doctors did not find any poisons in Navalny's body.
