Following the brutal treatment of Russian dissident political leader Alexi Navalny, including his attempted murder by Russian security operatives last year and the kangaroo court trial that sentenced him to Putin's gulag for over 2 years, the Biden Administration slapped new sanctions on some of the high level perpetrators in the Federal Security Service apparatus and prominent business and political figures in thug Vladimir Putin's crime syndicate posing as a government. President Biden's predecessor, Putin agent and seditionist mob leader Donald "Tovarich" Trump, never responded to Navalny's attempted assassination, acting as though the evidence was unclear about Putin's involvement despite clear intelligence to the contrary (ed. note: this nation has to finally determine the links between Trump and Russia if we're going to mete out justice to the "former guy").
According to AP's report:
"Tuesday’s sanctions would be the first of several steps by the Biden administration to 'respond to a number of destabilizing actions,' said one of the administration officials, who briefed reporters on the condition they not be identified further.
The sanctions are the first against Russia by the Biden administration, which has pledged to confront Putin for alleged attacks on Russian opposition figures and any malign actions abroad, including the hacking of U.S. government agencies and U.S. businesses. President Donald Trump spoke admiringly of Putin and resisted criticism of Putin’s government. That included dismissing U.S. intelligence findings that Russia had backed Trump in its covert campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. [snip]
The Biden administration coordinated the sanctions with the European Union, which already had imposed sanctions against a small number of Russian officials in Navalny’s case.
The 27-nation bloc imposed bans on travel and froze the assets in Europe of Alexander Bastrykin, head of the federal Investigative Committee; Igor Krasnov, the prosecutor general; Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard; and Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Prison Service." (our emphasis)
After four years of Putin-coddling, it's good to be in synch with our European allies in a coordinated effort against the Russian thugs, too. As the "Hoarse Whisperer" says in his tweet in our 1 p.m. post today, "it's nice to have a President who isn't a cowardly little fanboy of Putin."
Finally, it would be bad enough had Navalny been sentenced to home detention. Putin made sure that Navalny was sent to one of the most brutal Russian prisons, the Kafkaesque sounding "Penal Colony #2". Here's what he's facing, according to the New York Times:
"The site, Penal Colony No. 2 and also known by its initials IK2, is in the Vladimir Region in European Russia east of Moscow, indicating Mr. Navalny will not serve his sentence in the country’s harshest prisons in Siberia or the Arctic.
But the colony is known for strict enforcement of rules and for making extensive use of a separate, harsher, punishment facility within its walls where inmates are not allowed to mingle or even talk among themselves, according to former inmates and lawyers.
The site is typical for Russia’s colony-type prisons that evolved, with a few improvements, from the gulag camps established in the 1930s. Inmates live collectively in groups of several dozen called brigades in low slung, two-story buildings surrounded by walls and barbed wire." (our emphasis)
This is state brutality right out of the Soviet Union era, which is to be expected from former KGB agent Putin, who misses that era. We need to be prepared to apply even further pressure before long.
(photo: Alexei Navalny via Sky News)
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