MOSCOW (AP) – The Kremlin on Tuesday rejected calls from the West to release opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested on his return to Russia from Germany after treatment for nerve agent poisoning. Moscow called his case “an absolutely internal matter”.
Navalny blames his poisoning on President Vladimir Putin’s government, which has denied this. The convictions of his arrest and calls from abroad for his release have heightened existing tensions between Russia and the West. Some countries of the European Union are proposing more sanctions against Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “we cannot and will not take these statements into account.”
“We are talking about a fact of non-compliance with Russian law by a Russian citizen. This is an absolutely internal issue and we will not allow anyone to interfere and do not intend to listen to such statements, ”said Peskov.
Navalny, 44, was held at passport control at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on Sunday evening after arriving from Berlin, where he was treated after the August poisoning. On Monday, he was sentenced to 30 days pre-trial detention during a court hearing hastily set up in a police station where Navalny was being held.
The Russian Prison Service maintains that Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure and anti-corruption campaign, violated the terms of his suspended sentence for a 2014 money laundering conviction, deemed “arbitrary” by the European Court of Human Rights.
Officials are trying to send Navalny to prison to serve the 3 1/2 year suspended sentence.
He has interpreted the crackdown on him as a sign of Putin’s fear. Peskov rejected the suggestion that Putin feared Navalny as “nonsense” and insisted that he had broken the law. The spokesman said that the questions law enforcement had for Navalny “have nothing at all to do with the Russian president.”
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow and was flown to a hospital in Berlin two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, showed he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
The Russian authorities insisted that doctors treating Navalny in Siberia found no traces of poison and refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation.
Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he made to a man he claimed was a member of a group of officers from the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, who supposedly poisoned him in August and then tried to hide it. up. The FSB has dismissed the recording as a fake.
After Navalny was jailed on Monday, his allies announced preparations for nationwide protests on Saturday and released a video of Navalny urging people not to “be afraid” and “take to the streets”.
Peskov said that while calls to take to the streets were “alarming”, the Kremlin was not afraid of mass protests.
Also on Tuesday, Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption released a two-hour video investigation into what they called “ Putin’s Palace ” – an estate on Russia’s Black Sea that they said cost $ 1.3 billion and reportedly was funded through an extensive corruption program involving Putin’s inner circle. .
In the video produced and recorded before his arrest, Navalny claims that the estate and land that Russian media linked to Putin years ago is 39 times the size of Monaco.
The video included a drone video of the estate and detailed floor plans that Navalny says were leaked to his team by a contractor. Among the 3D images of interiors the team said were created from the floor plans and other sources were a hookah lounge, small theater, and casino room.
The investigation claimed that the estate, located in a remote area heavily guarded by Russian security forces, also had an underground ice rink and a tunnel from the manor to the coast.
“It is the most secretive and guarded facility in Russia,” Navalny said in the video. “It’s not a mansion or residence – it’s an entire city, or rather a kingdom.”
Within hours of being posted to YouTube, the video was viewed over 3 million times.
Peskov told Russian media that the allegations in Navalny’s investigation were “untrue.”
In a statement Tuesday from custody, Navalny encouraged his supporters to fight against “corruption, lies and lawlessness.”
I refuse to remain silent, listening to the blatant lies of Putin and his friends who are embroiled in corruption. Corruption, lies, and lawlessness make the lives of each of us worse, poorer and shorter. So why should we put up with it? read the statement posted on Navalny’s Instagram page.
In the video, Navalny’s team again urged supporters to take to the streets on Saturday. “Navalny has been fighting for our rights for years. It’s our turn to fight for him, ”says a short message at the beginning of the video.