A photo from the September 29, 2019 archive shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a rally in support of political prisoners on Prospekt Sakharova Street in Moscow, Russia. Alexei Navalny is unconscious in hospital after allegedly being poisoned according to his press secretary.
Sefa Karacan | Anadolu Agency through Getty Images
WASHINGTON – National Security Adviser to President-elect Joe Biden Jake Sullivan called for the immediate release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested on Sunday on arrival at a Moscow airport.
Earlier Sunday, Navalny flew to Russia from Berlin, Germany, where he had spent nearly half a year recovering from being poisoned last summer. He was arrested for passport control.
Last week, Russian authorities issued an order for Navalny’s arrest, alleging that he had violated the terms of a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement charges.
“Mr Navalny should be released immediately and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life should be held responsible,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter.
The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Sullivan’s call for Navalny’s release comes days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. The incoming Biden administration is expected to increase pressure on Russia.
After Navalny’s poisoning last year, Biden promised to “work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes” and accused President Donald Trump of not taking a hard enough stance.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators had called on the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russia in response to Navalny poisoning. Trump, who leaves office on Wednesday, has not done so.
The United Kingdom and the European Union, close allies of the United States, made rapid progress in imposing specific sanctions on six Russians and a state research center in October.
Aboard the flight back to Moscow, Navalny told reporters he was feeling very well and that making the trip home has been “the best time in the last five months.”
“I feel great. I will finally return to my hometown,” he said, according to a Reuters report.
Last year, Navalny was medically evacuated to Germany from a Russian hospital after falling ill after being told something had been added to the tea. Russian doctors treating Navalny denied the Kremlin critic had been poisoned and blamed his comatose state for low blood sugar levels.
In September, the German government said the 44-year-old Russian dissident was poisoned by a chemical nerve agent, and described the toxicology report as “unequivocal evidence.” The nervous agent belonged to the Novichok family, developed by the Soviet Union.
Following the test results, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” about the matter and called the poisoning “completely reprehensible.”
“The United States is deeply concerned about the results released today,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot said in a written statement at the time. “Alexei Navalny’s poisoning is completely reprehensible. Russia has used the chemical nerve agent Novichok in the past,” he said, referring to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the poisoning of Navalny and Skripal.
Navalny’s arrest on Sunday is about to strengthen relations between European leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin and comes when the Kremlin is working to secure a pipeline project, Nord Stream 2, in Germany.