The US imposed its second round of sanctions on Russia over the poisoning of spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in the United Kingdom in 2018.
The sanctions were imposed under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act). "The United States is announcing the second round of sanctions on Russia for its use of a "novichok" nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2018," US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement released on Saturday.
The sanctions include US opposition "to the extension of any loan or financial or technical assistance" to Russia by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It also imposes export licensing restrictions on Department of Commerce-controlled goods and technology.
The sanctions will come into effect following a 15-day congressional notification period - around August 15 - and will remain in place for a minimum of 12 months, the statement read.
Nerve agent poisoning
The US government had initially imposed sanctions on Russia in 2018 after Russian spy Sergei Skripals and double agent for the US was exposed to a nerve agent.
The sanctions included restrictions on arms sales and exports of critical goods as well as the termination of US assistance in Russia.
The recent sanctions echo the previous one and details that the act endangered "thousands of lives in Salisbury and Amesbury and caused the hospitalisation of the Skripals, a British police officer and two civilians, one of whom subsequently died from her exposure."
In September 2018, UK officials arrested Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov for conspiracy to murder and attempted murder of the Skripals.
The nerve agent attack which was revealed to be military-grade and developed by the former Soviet Union in the 1970s-80s was highly condemned by the international community for the usage of chemical warfare weapons.
Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Both the US and Russia initiated a diplomatic war resulting in mass expulsions of diplomats from both in Russia and the western countries.
