US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he is concerned about new charges against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who faces an additional 10 years in prison in a new case against him.
“Alexig Navalny and his associates are being targeted for their work denouncing official corruption,” Blinken wrote on Twitter. He called on the Russian authorities to release the opposition leader and end the persecution.
Navalny vowed on the first day of the new trial, that he faces an additional ten years in prison, that he will continue his fight against the Kremlin.
Last year, the Russian authorities banned the anti-corruption foundation of the main critic of President Vladimir Putin. Multiple legal proceedings were initiated against its leaders.
The new trial against the opponent will take place in the criminal camp where Navalny was imprisoned for more than a year for violating his parole in an old corruption case. The opposition leader should have turned himself in to the authorities while he was being treated in Germany for a poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He still had to spend a year and a half of what he believed to be politically motivated rule in the penal colony of Pokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Navalny’s imprisonment deeply displeases Western countries, and this new trial threatens to reignite tensions.
“My position on Navalny is very clear. His conviction is not in line with the principles of the rule of law,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday during a visit to Moscow.
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