DISINFO: EU sanctions related to the Navalny case are illegal
SUMMARY
EU sanctions related to the Navalny case are illegal.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Alexei Navalny and sanctions on Russia.
The EU sanctions against Russia are not illegal. They were adopted in line with international law and as a reaction to serious human rights violations in the Navalny case.
Alexei Navalny was arrested and shortly after sentenced to prison following his return to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for poisoning with a Novichok-type chemical nerve agent. The European Union has condemned his arrest and demanded his immediate release.
Navalny was sentenced to three and a half years in prison as a Moscow court ruled in favour of the prosecution’s accusation that Mr. Navalny had violated parole on a prison sentence that he received in 2014. He and his brother were convicted of stealing about $500,000 from two companies. However, this was a conviction that the European Court of Human Rights called “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”.
This is one of the reasons that many Western officials have called for the immediate release of Mr. Navalny. Additionally, Alexei Navalny is an independent Russian politician, not a pawn of any foreign government. His decision to return to Russia is related to his refusal to become an exile and to internal deliberations of his political movement, not to any order from abroad.
On the 2nd of March 2021, the European Council decided to impose restrictive measures on four Russian individuals responsible for serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, as well as widespread and systematic repression of freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and freedom of opinion and expression in Russia.
Alexander Bastrykin, Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Igor Krasnov, the Prosecutor-General, Viktor Zolotov, Head of the National Guard, and Alexander Kalashnikov, Head of the Federal Prison Service have been listed over their roles in the arbitrary arrest, prosecution and sentencing of Alexei Navalny, as well as the repression of peaceful protests in connection with his unlawful treatment.
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