By Tony Winterburn • Published: 18 Jan 2021 • 8:07
Germany and America Demand Release of Detained Putin Critic Alexei Navalny. image: Twitter
Germany and America Demand Release of Detained Putin Critic Alexei Navalny.
The United States and several European governments, including Germany, have demanded the release of opposition politician Alexei Navalny from Russian detention.
Aleksei Navalny returned to his home country Sunday, Jan. 17, just five months after a near-fatal nerve-agent attack, and was arrested after he went through passport control. It was a show of fearlessness by Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and of anxiety by President Vladimir V. Putin. who knew he would be detained.
In hours of live-streamed drama that played out in Berlin, in the air and at two Moscow airports, Mr Navalny travelled headlong into near-certain detention after deciding to leave the relative safety of Germany, where he had been recovering from last summer’s poisoning.
Reacting to his arrest, the US and EU led calls for Mr Navalny – an arch critic of President Putin – to be freed, but stopped short of threatening any punitive action. The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said the Russian authorities were trying to silence their critics. He called for Mr Navalny’s “immediate and unconditional release”.
“Confident political leaders do not fear competing voices, nor commit violence against or wrongfully detain political opponents,” Mr Pompeo said.
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