“The European Union openly considers the prosecution and sentencing of Mr. Navalny to be politically motivated. We again call on the Russian authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally without further delay,” the appeal reads.
Borrell expressed regret that “the Russian legal system continues to be used against Navalny as he now faces new criminal charges.”
“The EU continues to condemn in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination of Navalny by poisoning with a military chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. We call on the Russian Federation to conduct an investigation in full transparency and without further delay, and to cooperate fully with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),” the head of European diplomacy said.
He stressed that the EU “condemns the consistent campaign of disinformation against Navalny and his associates in the Russian state media.”
“We deplore the persecution of members of Navalny’s network, including arrest of Lilia Chanysheva, former head of the office of Alexei Navalny in the city of Ufa. We call on the Russian authorities for her immediate and unconditional release,” the statement said.
Navalny has been undergoing treatment and rehabilitation in Germany since August 2020 after being poisoned with a Novichok-class warfare agent. The plane on which he flew from Tomsk to Moscow, urgently sat down in Omsk August 20 due to the deterioration of the politician’s condition. Navalny was initially in a hospital in Omsk, and on August 22 he was delivered at the Berlin clinic “Charite”. Politician was in a coma for 18 days. The opposition leader considers the assassination attempt a terrorist act organized by the FSB on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After Navalny’s return to Russia On January 17, 2021, he was arrested in the Yves Rocher case, in which he had previously received a suspended sentence and had to report to investigators, but did not do so due to treatment in Germany. Simonovsky Court of Moscow February 2 replaced his probation with a real one in the Yves Rocher case. Taking into account the time spent under house arrest, the politician will stay in a general regime colony for two years and 6.5 months.
Since March, Navalny has been in a colony in the Vladimir region, in the city of Pokrov. The politician said that registered as runaway February 18. In October, the leadership of the Pokrovskaya colony removed him from the preventive register as prone to escape and registered as an extremist and terrorist.
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