The Biden administration said Tuesday that it will be sanctioning seven Russian officials in a cooperative effort with the EU to respond to the treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny by the Russian government.

These new sanctions come after Navalny was arrested and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for violating parole. The EU and UK sanctioned Russia last year after Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August. The US, then under the Trump administration, failed to impose any sanctions on Russia at that time.

The Biden administration’s sanctions will include sanctions on seven senior Russian officials and an expansion of sanctions under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act that will target 14 additional entities involved with chemical production. This will be the Biden administration’s first action to condemn Russian actions, signaling a clear departure from the Trump administration’s policies toward Russia.

Although the full extent of the sanctions have not yet been announced, the measures taken by the Biden administration are expected to mirror the sanctions already imposed by its UK and EU counterparts and any additional measures taken by the Biden administration are expected to be coordinated with the EU.

The sanctions by the Biden administration also come after two UN human rights experts emphasized the importance of keeping the investigation into Navalny’s poisoning a global priority and called for Navalny’s immediate release Monday. The two experts, Special Rapporteurs Agnès Callamard and Irene Khan, said, “We believe that poisoning Mr. Navalny with Novichok might have been deliberately carried out to send a clear, sinister warning that this would be the fate of anyone who would criticise and oppose the Government.”

Although there has been some speculation about the actors who were responsible for poisoning Navalny, the report pointed out that the novel way in which Novichok was used on Navalny shows that it is highly likely that there was government involvement in his poisoning and it criticized the lack of investigative effort by the Russian government. Before calling for Navalny’s immediate release from the penal colony he is being held at, the Special Rapporteurs reminded the Russian government that “[the Russian government] is responsible for the care and protection of Mr. Navalny in prison and that it shall be held responsible for any harm that may befall him.”