The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, asked this Sunday not to draw hasty conclusions about the death of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, a criticism of the Western powers that were quick to blame the Kremlin.
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“I think it's a matter of common sense (…“If the death is under suspicion, an investigation must first be carried out to find out what he died of.”declared the leftist president in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, where he participated as a guest at the annual summit of the African Union.
The leader of the main Latin American power asked to wait for the forensic results before expressing any opinion. Otherwise, “If he now judges and says that I don't know who ordered the murder and that it wasn't him, then he will have to apologize,” he said. “Why rush to accuse?” continued the 78-year-old politician.
His statements constitute the first reactions from a member of the Brics, a group of emerging countries that also includes India, China, Russia and South Africa.
Lula has been criticized by Western powers for taking too soft a stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The leader, who returned to power in January 2023 after the mandate of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, has criticized the responses of the United States and the European Union to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and has refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow.
Navalny, who had emerged as the Kremlin's main critic, died on Friday at the age of 47 in a remote Arctic prison after more than three years of detention.
Lula pointed out that Navalni could have been ill and warned about the dangers of “trivializing an accusation.” “I don't want speculation,” she stressed. “I understand the interests of those who accuse immediately, [diciendo]'it was so-and-so'. But that's not my motto. “I await the report that will be drawn up, the examination that says what the citizen died of,” he insisted.
Navalny's entourage accused Russian authorities on Saturday of being behind his death.
AFP
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