The Russian Foreign Ministry This Friday he rejected the “crude” accusations of the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, who affirmed that the Russian government is “responsible” for the death in prison of the country's main opponent, Alexei Navalny.
“The death of a person is always a tragedy (…) Instead of making crude accusations, it would be better to show restraint and await the official results of the medical investigation” into the causes of death, stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Russian in a statement.
Moscow wondered why the White House and the State Department consider the death of a Russian citizen in a prison in this country “much more important” and “more terrible” than that of an American in a Ukrainian prison.
The statement mentions the journalist and blogger of Chilean and American citizenship, Gonzalo Lira, who died last January in custody in Ukraine. Lira had been arrested in May 2023 accused of spreading false information about the war and justifying the Russian military campaign in Ukraine on social networks.
The Kremlin spokesman also considered “inadmissible” the statements of Western leaders, who held the Kremlin directly responsible for the death in prison of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.
“There are no statements from doctors or information from forensics and penitentiary services. That is, There is no information. And we find such statements,” said Dmitri Peskov, presidential spokesman, in statements to Russian agencies.
(Also read: Who was Alexei Navalny? The Russian opponent of Vladimir Putin who died in prison)
He stressed that it is, “evidently, absolutely furious and inadmissible statements”.
Peskov assured that he had already informed the president, Vladimir Putin, about the opponent's sudden death and assured that The penitentiary services do not need to receive any order in relation to the investigations necessary to clarify what happened.
The president of the Lower House of the Russian Parliament, Viacheslav Volodin, for his part, He stated that the leaders of Western powers are “guilty” for Navalny's death and that his death “benefits” them, since they are “losing” the battle in Ukraine.
Western leaders “who have made a large number of failed decisions and are clinging to their positions benefit from his death,” Volodin declared, without elaborating on his accusations as the second anniversary of the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine approaches.
The prison service of the Arctic region of Yamal announced this Friday the death of Navalny, 47, an activist who denounced corruption and became the most important critic of the Kremlin, who was serving a 19-year sentence after being convicted of “extremism.”
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The penitentiary services explained that on Friday, after taking a walk in the IK-3 penitentiary in the Arctic town of Jarp (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District), where today the thermometers read more than 20 degrees below zero, The opposition politician “felt bad” and “lost consciousness.”
Emergency medical teams immediately responded to the prison's call and attempted to revive him “for more than half an hour,” according to the hospital services of the town of Labitnangui, located in the Arctic Circle.
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“The necessary resuscitation procedures were performed, which did not give any results. The emergency doctors confirmed the death of the condemned man. The causes of death are being established,” says the official statement from the penitentiary services.
Subsequently, the penitentiary services announced the dispatch of a commission of prison officials and doctors from their central apparatus in Moscow to clarify the causes and circumstances surrounding the death of the most famous prisoner in this country.
After learning of his death, US Vice President Kamala Harris denounced this Friday that Russia is “responsible” for Navalny's death, which in her opinion is another sign of Putin's “brutality.”
For his part, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, assured that “for more than a decade, “Russian government Putin has persecuted, poisoned and imprisoned Navalny, and his death is now reported.”
(In other news: Message from Alexei Navalny to his wife before dying in Russian prison: 'I still love you')
If these reports are accurate, he added, “his death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of a man only underscore the weakness and rot at the heart of the system Putin has built.”
Similar accusations were made by the European Union, numerous European leaders and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Navalny, who died at the age of 47, had returned to Russia in early 2021 after being poisoned months earlier with the chemical agent Novichok. in Siberia, an attack that Navalny says was a direct order from Putin himself.
As in the times of the Soviet GULAG or the tsarist katorgas, Navalny – sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism” – He was transferred in December from a prison less than 200 kilometers from Moscow to another prison in the Arctic, on the other side of the Ural mountain range.
(Continue reading: 'It's obvious, Navalny has been murdered': Zelensky after the death of the Russian opposition leader)
The reason, according to the opposition, was his decision to launch a national campaign against Putin's re-election in the March presidential elections shortly after he registered his candidacy to continue another six years in the Kremlin.
Navalny's health had already sparked great concern when the opponent went on a hunger strike between March and April 2021 to protest the refusal to be treated by doctors outside of prison services, weeks in which he lost a lot of weight.
Moscow authorities warned the population this Friday not to take to the streets to protest the death of prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny. “Organizing or holding unauthorized rallies, convening them and participating in them is an administrative offense,” the Moscow prosecutor's office warned in a statement.
The prosecutor's office noted that it “considers it necessary to warn about the violation of the law,” referring to several online calls to organize “a mass demonstration in the center of Moscow.”
AFP AND EFE
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