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President Biden’s national security adviser said Sunday that the United States is preparing for more sanctions against Russia in response to the poisoning of Alexei A. Navalny, the country’s most prominent opposition leader, is days after Biden attended his first face-to-face summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
“We are preparing another package of sanctions to apply in this case,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, referring to Mr. Navalny’s treatment.
Mr Sullivan was vague when pressed about the timing of the sanctions or what they would include, saying only that additional action would come “once we develop the packages to ensure we get the right goals”.
“When we do that, we will impose more sanctions in relation to chemical weapons,” he said.
In April, the Biden administration imposed its first sanctions on Russia for the poisoning and imprisonment of Mr. Navalny. But those sanctions were not directed specifically at Mr. Putin or the oligarchs who support him.
Jane Psaki, the White House press secretary, said there was no significance to the timing of Sullivan’s remarks. “The law requires us to continue to consider the objectives of sanctions related to the use of chemical weapons,” she said, noting that “there was no change from before the summit to after the summit.”
Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin described their three-hour meeting in Geneva on Wednesday as positive, despite little concrete action to get out of it other than agreeing to send ambassadors to each other’s capitals.
After the meeting, Mr. Biden told reporters he was clear about the consequences for Russia if Mr. Navalny, who was sentenced in February to more than two years in prison, dies in captivity.
“I made it clear to him that I think the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia,” Biden said.
“There was no hostility,” Putin said at a separate news conference after the summit. “On the contrary, our meeting was held in a constructive spirit.”
Republicans have criticized the president’s handling of Russia, claiming that Biden showed weakness in his meeting with Mr. Putin and suggested that he waived sanctions against the company behind Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, allowing it to be completed.
Mr. Sullivan retracted that characterization of the meeting, saying the summit was “a study in contrast to what happened in Helsinki,” where President Donald J. Trump held his first face-to-face meeting with Mr. Putin in 2018. He dismissed US intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia interfered in the election year 2016.
“President Biden has privately told President Putin that there will be costs and consequences if harmful activities against the United States continue,” Mr. Sullivan said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that the United States had sent $150 million in security assistance to Ukraine a week before the summit. .
“He came in and out of this summit in Geneva as the leader of the free world, a mantle that Donald Trump has relinquished and that Joe Biden has taken back on behalf of this country,” Mr. Sullivan said.
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