Alexei Navalny: UK failed to sanction Putin critic’s top targets despite warnings

Alexei Navalny drew up a list of Russian state figures that should be sanctioned by Western governments in 2021, but the UK has failed to punish a number of his top targets – despite direct pleas to ministers.

The fierce Putin critic, who died in prison last week, identified a group of 35 Russian “human rights abusers, kleptocrats, and propagandists” to be penalised by the West as he returned to Moscow in 2021 after recovering from novichok poisoning in Germany.

Prior to boarding the plane, Navalny and his campaign group released the ‘Navalny35’ list and called on governments to punish those on the list.

However, three years on, the UK has still not sanctioned six key figures identified by the group.

Among those still yet to face any UK sanctions are Russian health minister Mikhail Murashko, who Navalny accused of “covering up” his poisoning and frustrating his exit to Germany.

Dmitry Ivanov, the head of the FSB in the region where Navalny was poisoned, and the chief of the Russian prison service, Alexander Petrovich Kalashnikov, which Navalny’s campaign group claims engineered his arrest, are also yet to face any curbs from Britain.

Six of Navalny’s top targets left unsanctioned by the UK government

• Dmitry Ivanov – head of Chelyabinsk FSB, where Navalny was poisoned

• Elena Evgenievna Morozova – judge of Khimki District Court

• Mikhail Albertovich Murashko – Russian Minister of Health since 2020

• Denis Gennadievich Popov – Moscow City Prosecutor

• Igor Vladimirovich Yanchuk – Head of the Khimki Police Department, responsible for Alexey Navalny’s arrest

• Alexander Petrovich Kalashnikov – director of the Federal Penitentiary Service 

The failure to sanction all 35 individuals on Navalny’s list comes despite direct pleas from his campaign group, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, to the British government.

In a letter to then-foreign secretary Dominic Raab in 2021, the chief of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Vladimir Ashurkov, said that each of the individuals on the list “actively participates in the oppression and corruption which characterises Putin’s regime”. 

“Sanctioning these individuals, freezing their assets, barring them from entering the UK and from doing business with British companies would create a substantial cost for their actions and serve as a deterrent to other members of the political and business elite,” Ashurkov wrote.

Only Canada has sanctioned all 35 people included in the list, while the UK and Australia have sanctioned 29 each. The EU has taken action against 26 of the people and the US 24 people.

According to the UK sanctions lists, 1,730 Russian nationals have been hit with curbs since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Foreign Office declined to comment when contacted by City A.M. about Navalny’s sanctions list.

Foreign secretary David Cameron said over the weekend that the government will “look at whether there are individual people that are responsible and whether there are individual actions that we can take” in response to Navalny’s death.

The revelations will likely pile pressure on the UK to outline concrete actions in response to his death.

Bill Browder, a vocal Kremlin critic, said the “first and most obvious” response to Navalny’s death should be sanctioning the remaining members of the list.

“This was his request in case something happened to him,” Browder told City A.M. “Well, now something has happened to him.”