Hold Russia accountable for latest chemical weapons attack

Excerpt

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist who was poisoned with a rare nerve agent while traveling in Russia, has recovered sufficiently to do what he does best: demand accountability from Russian government officials who abuse their power to violate human rights and the rule of law.

Navalny used his first blog post since the attempt on his life to demand that the Russian government turn over a key piece of evidence: the clothing he was wearing on the day he was poisoned. Earlier this month, German, French, and Swedish laboratories confirmed that Navalny, who is now receiving medical treatment in Germany, had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok group, a family of chemical weapons developed by the Soviet Union. Moscow’s continued use of chemical weapons against Kremlin enemies underscores that the international community has yet to deter Russia’s repeated violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the 1993 treaty that bans chemical weapons.

To uphold long-standing international norms and laws against the use of chemical weapons, Washington and its allies should impose meaningful sanctions on Moscow.