Canada has sanctioned 13 more Russians from the intelligence service, police force and corrections system for the role they played in poisoning, imprisonment and death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The new sanctions came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, came to Ottawa for meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly.
Navalnaya has vowed to carry on with her late husband’s anticorruption work.
Joly will tell Navalnaya that Canada holds Russia “fully responsible” for her husband’s death.
Navalny died on February 16 at a Russian penal colony where he was serving a 19-year jail term for what Canada described as trumped-up charges fabricated to silence an opposition politician creating problems for President Vladimir Putin.
Six Russians were sanctioned by Canada within two weeks of Navalny’s death including the head of the “Polar Wolf” penal colony, a judge and a prosecutor.
The thirteen names include senior officials with the Russian intelligence service and the police force.
Joly says the sanctions target those involved in Navalny’s death and the nerve agent poisoning that nearly killed him in 2020, his unlawful arrest upon going back to Russia in 2021, human rights violations while he was imprisoned, the failure to investigate what caused his death and a delay in handing over his remains to his family.
His remains were given to his mother on February 24, and he was buried on March 1 in Moscow. Police detained many people who tried to lay flowers in his memory.
Russia has denied any involvement in the death of Navalny, saying he collapsed while he was out for a walk at the prison and could not be resuscitated
During a visit to Ukraine about a week after Navalny’s death, Trudeau said Putin had Navalny executed because Putin is weak and afraid of facing a real opponent.