WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the following statement after the government of Germany confirmed today that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned using the nerve agent Novichok, a highly lethal military grade nerve agent the Russian government is known to have developed:
“Given the Kremlin’s long history of using Novichok to carry out state-sanctioned murders, today’s announcement points to the Russian government’s involvement in yet another brazen chemical attack against its own citizens. I call upon the Trump Administration to immediately determine, under Section 306(b) of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, whether the Russian Federation was involved in this poisoning and, if so, to immediately impose Congressionally mandated sanctions.
“The President of the United States must coordinate a strong international response to this latest aggression along with our partners and allies. Silence will be interpreted as a tacit approval for these types of attacks to continue.”
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