Foto: Evgheni Feldman, pentru proiectul „Acesta este Navalnîi” (CC-BY-NC)
Western leaders on Friday paid tribute to Alexei Navalny’s courage as a fighter for freedom, some accusing the Kremlin of murder asserting Vladimir Putin should be held accountable for his death at a Siberian prison.
U.S President Joe Biden said Vladimir Putin and ‘his thugs’ were behind his death.
„He was so many things that Putin was not. He was brave. He was principled … dedicated to building a Russia where a rule of law existed …. and to an evolving belief that Russia…. was a cause worth fighting for, and obviously even dying for,” Biden said.
„There is no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did,” he added.
The death on Friday of Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, leaves the fragmented Russian opposition bereft of its most courageous leader as Putin prepares for an election which will keep him in power until at least 2030.
Navalny’s wife, Yulia, told the Munich Security Conference she could not be sure her husband was dead because „Putin and his government… lie incessantly”.
„But if this is true, I want Putin, his entire entourage, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband,” she said.
„This regime and Vladimir Putin must bear personal responsibility for all the terrible things they have been doing to my country, to our country, Russia, in recent years,” she said.
The audience was captivated and gave her an emotional standing ovation when she finished, the New York Times reported.
The European Union said it would do whatever it can to hold Russia, President Putin accountable for Navalny’s death, the EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, and vice-president, Josep Borrell, said in a joint statement.
Navalny lost consciousness after he fell and died shortly after despite efforts by the prison’s medical team and ambulance staff, the prison sentence said.
There are now no opposition leaders of such prominence left in Russia. Navalny was a symbol of hope of an alternative future to Putin for some young urban Russians.
He rose to prominence in 2010 by documenting and speaking publicly about what he said was the vast corruption and opulence among the „crooks and thieves” running Putin’s Russia.
His movement is outlawed and most of his senior allies now live in exile in Europe.
Navalny’s supporters regarded him as a future leader of Russia, who would be president once he was freed. But many opposition activists feared he was in mortal danger in the Russian prison system.
He earned admiration from Russia’s opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
Russian prosecutors warned people not to take part in any mass meetings in Moscow.
Meetings are planned in his honor in London, Paris, Oslo, Rome, Brussels, Berlin, Geneva, Prague, Yerevan, Tbilisi and Vilnius.
The Kremlin painted Navalny as an extremist and a puppet of the CIA, which they claim is intent on sowing chaos and turning Russia into a client state of the West.
