MOSCOW (AP) – The Kremlin on Tuesday responded to calls from the West to release opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested following his return from Germany to Russia after treatment for nerve agent poisoning. Moscow calls his case “an absolute internal matter.”
Navalny blames his poisoning on President Vladimir Putin’s government, which has denied it. The condemnations of his arrest and the calls from abroad for his release contributed to the current tensions between Russia and the West. Some European Union countries 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 Russian citizen not complying with Russian law. “This is an absolute internal matter and we will not allow anyone to interfere with it and we do not intend to listen to such statements,” Peskov said.
Navalny, 44, was detained at passport control at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Sunday night after arriving from Berlin, where he was being treated for poisoning in August. On Monday, he was ordered to be detained for 30 days during a court hearing in a police station where Navalny was detained.
The Russian prison service maintains that Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure and anti-corruption campaigner, violated the terms of his suspended sentence for a 2014 money laundering conviction, which was considered ‘arbitrary’ by the European Court of Human Rights. .
Officials want to send Navalny to jail to serve the suspended sentence of 3 years.
He interpreted the repression against him as a sign of Putin’s fear. Peskov dismissed suggestions that Putin feared Navalny as “nonsense” and insisted that he had broken the law. The spokesman said the questions law enforcers had to Navalny “have nothing to do with the Russian president.”
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow and was flown to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, determined that he was exposed to a Soviet era of the Novichok nerve.
Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia found no traces of poison and refused to launch a full-fledged criminal investigation.
Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he said was a member of a group of officers from the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, who allegedly called him in August. poisoned and then tried to cover. on. The FSB dismissed the survey as false.
After Navalny was jailed on Monday, his allies on Saturday announced preparations for nationwide protests and released a video of Navalny urging people not to ‘be afraid’ and ‘take to the streets’.
Peskov said the Kremlin did not fear mass protests, although calls to take to the streets were “disturbing”.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation also released a two – hour video investigation on Tuesday into what it calls ‘Putin’s Palace’ – a Russian Black Sea estate estimated to cost $ 1.3 billion and allegedly funded through an extensive corruption scheme involving Putin’s inner circle. .
In the video produced and recorded before his arrest, Navalny claims that the estate and lands that Russian media linked to Putin years ago are 39 times as large as Monaco.
The video contains drone videos of the estate and detailed floor plans that, according to Navalny, were leaked to his team by a contractor. Among the 3D images of interiors created by the team based on the floorboards and other sources are a water pipe lounge, a small theater and a casino room.
The investigation claims that the estate, located in a secluded area heavily guarded by the Russian security forces, also has an underground ice rink and a tunnel from the mansion to the shore.
“This is the most mysterious and protected facility in Russia,” Navalny said in the video. “It’s not a country house or a dwelling – it’s an entire city, or rather a kingdom.”
Within hours of being posted on YouTube, the video had been viewed more than 3 million times.
Peskov told Russian media the allegations in Navalny’s investigation were “untrue.”
In a statement on Tuesday before the trial, Navalny urged his supporters to fight “corruption, lies and lawlessness”.
“I refuse to keep quiet and listen to the shameless lies of Putin and his friends who are entangled in corruption. Corruption, lies and lawlessness make everyone’s lives worse, poorer and shorter. Why then should we tolerate it? ‘read the statement posted on Navalny’s Instagram page.
In the video, Navalny’s team once again encouraged fans to take to the streets on Saturday. ‘Navalny has been fighting for our rights for many years. It’s our turn to fight for him, ”reads a short message at the beginning of the video.