Navalny calls on EU to impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs / Article / LSM.lv

If European politicians want to be strong against the Kremlin’s undemocratic and corrupt policies in Russia, then sanctions should be imposed not on security guards, who are commanders and executors, but on oligarchs, says Alexei Navalny, one of the Kremlin’s most visible opponents.

Speaking to members of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday, November 27, several Russian opposition politicians, activists and NGOs said the ruling regime should not be seen as legitimate if Russia continues to deliberately exclude political forces from elections.

Alexei Navalny and 3 other Russian opposition speakers spoke to the European Parliament in a virtual format, and their position was very clear: 10 months after the Russian parliamentary elections, they called for an assessment of whether opposition candidates would be allowed to participate.

Navalny also called on European politicians to change their current sanctions policy. He called on the West to be less formal in imposing sanctions.

“So far, the approach of the European Parliament and the Member States has been subject to sanctions persons who technically do bad things. For example, in my case, certain individuals who are directly responsible for poisoning me or issuing orders. However, I do not think it makes sense to impose sanctions on generals or colonels, or on people who travel little and certainly do not have luxury property in Europe. We need to ask ourselves, why are these people poisoning, killing and falsifying the election results? And the answer is very, very simple – money! The real goal of sanctions must be the president [Vladimira] Putin’s closest circles. That is why I will say very directly – as long as the oligarch Usmanov’s expensive yachts continue to moor in Barcelona or Monaco, no one in Russia or even in the Kremlin will take European sanctions seriously, “Navalni said.

Navalny explained that sanctions should be imposed on oligarchs close to the Kremlin, whom Russian society hates, and that this will allow European sanctions to be popular in society, thus helping the opposition.

“These sanctions must be popular in Russian society – and they will be! Just target the Russian oligarchs! Say: ‘Mr Usmanov, Mr Abramovich, Mr Rothenberg, you are acting against the Russian people, you are acting against Europe. You keep saying that Europe is very bad – then please take your yachts and go to the beautiful ports of the Republic of Belarus, “said Navalniy.

Navalny also called on Europe to develop a new strategy for relations with Russia, rather than trying to improve the existing one, and stressed that it was vital for Europe to separate the Kremlin from Russian society in any communication, otherwise Russian society was developing a anti-Western sentiment.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, who runs the Boris Nemtsov Foundation and who himself has been poisoned twice, also spoke to MEPs. He emphasized that change in Russia must come from Russian society itself and not from outside, but that Europe can help with one thing.

“The only thing we are asking our friends in the West, and the European Union in particular, is to stand up for your values! That you do what you preach yourself. Do not support Vladimir Putin’s corrupt, kleptocratic, authoritarian regime, allowing his loved ones and oligarchs to use the countries of the European Union as a hiding place for the money they have robbed the Russian people. It’s been going on for too long, “said Kara-Murza.

He also welcomed the progress of the Magnitsky list in Europe. It is a mechanism that makes it much easier to sanction human rights violators.

CONTEXT:

To the leader of the Russian opposition Navalny remained ill end of August. When Navalny was delivered clinic in Germany, found that he poisoned with a substance from the class “Novičok”, and such a substance may be available only to Russian special services, so Western countries asked Russia for clarification. Russia denied any involvement in the incident and called it a Western information campaign against Russia.

German, French and Swedish laboratories analyzes show that he had been poisoned with a nerve-paralyzing substance belonging to the Novičok group. But the European Union imposed sanctions six senior Russian officials and the Research Institute of Organic Chemistry.

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