Russia-Ukraine war: US attorney general travels to Lviv in unannounced visit

United States Attorney General Merrick Garland made an unannounced visit to Ukraine last week. Garland was invited by his Ukrainian counterpart amidst an international effort to hold Russia accountable for the war.

A US Justice Department official said Garland made an unannounced visit to Lviv in Ukraine on Friday last week. Garland’s visit was at the invitation of the Ukrainian prosecutor general, where he held several meetings in an international effort to hold Moscow accountable for the crimes committed in its war in Ukraine.

On the same day, Washington also imposed sanctions on six Russians allegedly involved in the arrest, detainment, and prosecution of opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who criticized the war in Ukraine.

Kara-Murza was arrested in April and was declared by Moscow a “foreign agent.” Kara-Murza is being detained on suspicion of spreading false information about the Russian armed forces under the new laws that were passed eight days after the invasion of Ukraine last year.

“The United States reiterates its call for Kara-Murza’s immediate and unconditional release and is committed to ensuring that Vladimir Putin’s attempts to silence critics will not succeed,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement. The sanctions were announced by both the State and Treasury Departments.

The sanctions target Russians Elena Anatolievna Lenskaya, Andrei Andreevich Zadachin, and Danila Yurievich Mikheev for human rights abuses under the US Global Magnitsky Act. The State Department, in a separate action, sanctioned Russian deputy justice minister Oleg Mikhailovich Sviridenko, judge Diana Igorevna Michchenko, who ruled that Kara-Murza be arrested, and judge Ilya Pavlovich Koszlov, who rejected Kara-Murza’s appeal of the arrest ruling.

According to the Treasury, Zadachin, who is a Russian special investigator, ordered that a criminal case be filed against Kara-Murza for the speech he made to the Arizona state House of Representatives. Mikheev appeared as an expert witness for the Russian government to review the speech and provide a report that resulted in charges against the opposition leader. Kara-Murza, who also has British citizenship, was an aide to Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in 2018.

Kara-Murza has also called on Washington, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to impose Magnitsky-style sanctions on human rights abusers and corrupt individuals in Russia, the Treasury said.