WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — President Joe Biden Thursday vowed to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death.
Biden made the announcement following a meeting with Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and his daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, in California.
“We are going to announce sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for [Navalny’s] death, tomorrow,” the president told reporters. “We are not letting up.”
Navalny, one of the Kremlin’s most ardent critics, died in an Arctic penal colony last week while serving a 19-year sentence on charges that his supporters have categorized as “politically motivated.” The cause of death is still unknown.
In a readout of Biden’s meeting with Navalny’s family, the White House said the president conveyed “his heartfelt condolences” for their loss.
Biden also “expressed his admiration for Aleksey Navalny’s extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone.”
The president emphasized that Navalny’s legacy will “carry on through people across Russia and around the world mourning his loss and fighting for freedom, democracy, and human rights.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan previewed the forthcoming sanctions at a press briefing earlier this week — which will come on the eve of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — as a “substantial package covering a range of different elements of the Russian defense industrial base, and sources of revenue for the Russian economy that power Russia’s war machine, that power Russia’s aggression, and that power Russia’s repression.”