The United States said on Wednesday it had determined that the Russian government had used a nerve agent in the attack against a former Russian agent and his daughter in Britain and would soon impose sanctions against Moscow.
“The United States … determined under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act) that the government of the Russian Federation has used chemical or biological weapons in violation of international law, or has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.
She said sanctions would take effect on or around August 22.
British police have identified several Russians who they believe were behind the nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy service, and his daughter Yulia, were found unconscious on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.
Britain blamed Russia for the poisonings and identified the poison as Novichok, a deadly group of nerve agents developed by the…
