Russia will retaliate over ‘illegal’ US sanctions

American action over Novichok leads to Kremlin threat to withhold engine used in space programme

RUSSIA yesterday criticised America’s “illegal” new sanctions over the Salisbury poisoning and warned it could hit back with its own financial punishments, including a ban on sales of a rocket engine used in America’s space programme.

A foreign ministry spokesman said the Trump administration was “demonising” Russia and vowed to work up its own retaliatory measures.

The US sanctions helped drive down the rouble, Russia’s currency, and shares in Russia’s biggest airline, Aeroflot, to their lowest level in two years.

Britain welcomed the response, but President Donald Trump – who has at times departed from his own administration’s tough line on the Kremlin – had yet to comment by yesterday lunchtime.

The US State Department announced that it had determined Russia was behind the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, a Russian double agent and his daughter, in Salisbury in March.

Both survived, though another British woman, Dawn Sturgess, who came into contact with the poison, later died.

US officials have said that sanctions will kick in later this month, targeting electronic devices and engines, among other technologies.

Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said: “The Russian side will work on developing retaliatory measures” and accused America of playing up an “demonising Russia”.

Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said the sanctions were “absolutely illegal” and called it “categorically unacceptable” to link them to the Salisbury poisoning in March. He said Britain was ignoring Russia’s calls for a joint investigation and added: “Once again we deny in the strongest terms the accusations about the possible connection of the Russian state to what happened in Salisbury.”

Russia has threatened to ban sales of a key rocket engine to the United States in response. Sergei Ryabukhin, head of the budget committee in the upper house of parliament, called the US sanctions “obnoxious and cynical”.

He said Russia could stop exports to the United States of the RD-180 rocket engine, which powers the first stage of the Atlas 5 rocket made by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Since its introduction in 2002, the Atlas 5 has carried the top-secret X-37B space plane, the New Horizons probe that flew by Pluto, and the Curiosity rover exploring the surface of Mars.

It is slated to take astronauts to the International Space Station in its first manned flight in 2019. The Russian producer of the RD-180 said late last month

it had signed a contract to deliver six more engines to the US through 2020.  The Novichok poisonings in Salis- bury and Amesbury have cost £10m for overtime, the destruction of vehicles, and drawing in help from other forces, it was revealed yesterday.

Officers from 40 other forces were called in at a cost of more than £7million, with more than £1.3million being spent on overtime within Wiltshire Police. The £10million total does not include the cost of the Metropolitan Police’s investigations.