WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that his administration will announce major sanctions Friday to hold Russia accountable for the death last week of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Biden confirmed the forthcoming package to reporters before leaving for a campaign trip to the West Coast. “What I came to tell you was we’d be announcing sanctions on Russia. We’ll have a major package announced on Friday,” he said.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a briefing with reporters Tuesday that "it will be a substantial package covering a range of different elements of the Russian defense industrial base, and sources of revenue for the Russian economy that power Russia’s war machine, that power Russia’s aggression and that power Russia’s repression."
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who first revealed the new sanctions earlier Tuesday, said that the announcement is also in response to Russia's continued aggression in Ukraine, which began nearly two years ago. He stressed that one of the most powerful actions the U.S. can take to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin is for Congress to pass an emergency spending bill that would provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Navalny died at the age of 47 in a Russian penal colony above the Arctic Circle, the country’s prison service said Friday. Navalny, who was serving a combined prison sentence of more than 30 years on charges of extremism and fraud that he denied, was moved to that prison late last year.
“On February 16, 2024, in penal colony No. 3, convict A.A. Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness,” the prison service for the Yamalo-Nenets region said in a statement on its website.
Russian authorities haven't provided any additional details about the circumstances surrounding his death. The day before, Navalny looked healthy in video of a court proceeding from the prison.
Navalny’s family is still pushing for the release of his body, which his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Russia of hiding to cover up what she says was murder.
On Friday, Biden explicitly blamed Putin for Navalny's death and didn't rule out the possibility of the U.S. increasing sanctions on Russia.
"Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible," he said at the White House. "What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled — not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target his [the] citizens of other countries, as we’ve seen what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people."
Asked if Navalny's death was an assassination, Biden said, "We don’t know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did."
Biden said he hopes that Navalny's death spurs Congress to pass the emergency aid package that would provide much-needed assistance to Ukraine as it battles Russian forces.
"The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten," Biden said. "It’s going to go down in the pages of history. It really is. It’s consequential."
The president has been calling on Congress for months to pass additional aid to Ukraine along with funding for Israel and Taiwan. Originally, Republicans insisted that it must be combined with legislation to address the situation at the U.S. southern border, but they ultimately killed a bipartisan deal that resulted from those negotiations. Last week, the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid measure and House GOP leaders have repeatedly signaled that they have no plans of bringing it to the floor for a vote.
Congress is currently on recess with lawmakers back home in their districts.
Sullivan said Tuesday that Ukraine needs ammunition. The U.S. is "increasingly getting reports of Ukrainian troops rationing ammunition on the front lines as Russian forces continue to attack both on the ground and from the air, trying to wear down the Ukrainian defenses that we’ve worked so extensively to build up over the past two years," he said.
A U.S. official said Tuesday that Biden will join a virtual meeting of G7 leaders on Saturday, the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Italian government announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to join the call.
