MOSCOW (AP) – The Kremlin on Tuesday canceled calls from the West to release opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested on his return to Russia from Germany after a poisoning treatment with an agent nervous. Moscow called his case an “absolutely internal matter.”
Navalny blames his intoxication on the government of President Vladimir Putin, who has denied it. Convictions for his detention and calls from abroad for his release have added to tensions between Russia and the West. Some European Union countries suggest 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 violation of Russian law by a citizen of Russia. It is an absolutely internal issue and we will not allow anyone to interfere and we do not intend to listen to these statements, “said Peskov.
Navalny, 44, was arrested Sunday evening at passport control at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after arriving from Berlin, where he was treated after poisoning in August. On Monday, he was remanded in custody for 30 days during a court hearing that was hastily established at a police station where Navalny was detained.
Russia’s prison service claims that Navalny, Russia’s most important opposition figure and anti-corruption defender, violated the terms of his suspended sentence on a 2014 money laundering conviction. which the European Court of Human Rights considered “arbitrary”.
Officials are looking to send Navalny to jail to serve his 3-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.
He has interpreted the crackdown on him as a sign of Putin’s fear. Peskov rejected suggestions that Putin feared Navalny as “nonsense” and insisted he had broken the law. The spokesman said the issues that law enforcement had for Navalny “have nothing to do with the Russian president.”
Navalny fell into a coma while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20 and was taken to a hospital in Berlin two days later. Laboratories in Germany, France, and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Novichok nerve agent from the Soviet era.
Russian authorities insisted that doctors treating Navalny in Siberia found no trace of poison and refused to open a full-blown criminal investigation.
Last month, Navalny posted the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man alleging he was a member of a group of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, who allegedly he poisoned her in August and then tried to cover her. up. The FSB has rejected the recording as fake.
After Navalny was jailed on Monday, his allies on Saturday announced preparations for national protests and released a video of Navalny urging people not to “be afraid” and “take to the streets.”
Peskov said that while calls to take to the streets were “alarming,” the Kremlin did not fear mass protests.
Also Tuesday, the Navalny Foundation for the Fight against Corruption released a two-hour video investigation into what they called “Putin’s Palace,” a Russian Black Sea estate that reportedly cost $ 1.3 billion. and that it was allegedly funded through an elaborate corruption scheme involving Putin’s inner circle. .
In the video produced and recorded before his arrest, Navalny claims that the property and the grounds that the Russian media had related to Putin years ago are 39 times the size of Monaco.
The video showed a video with unmanned aircraft from the estate and detailed floor plans that Navalny says a contractor leaked to his team. Among the 3D images of interiors the team said were created based on floor plans and other sources were a hookah lounge, a small theater and a casino room.
The investigation alleged that the estate, located in an isolated area heavily guarded by Russian security forces, also had an underground ice rink and a tunnel from the mansion to the coast.
“It’s the most secretive and guarded facility in Russia,” Navalny says in the video. “It’s not a country house or a residence, it’s an entire city, or rather a kingdom.”
Within hours of being posted to YouTube, the video received more than 3 million views.
Peskov told Russian media that the allegations in Navalny’s investigation were “false.”
In a statement Tuesday from pretrial detention, Navalny encouraged his supporters to fight “corruption, lying and illegality.”
“I refuse to keep quiet, listening to the blatant lies of Putin and his corrupt friends. Corruption, lies and illegality make the lives of each of us worse, they are getting poorer and shorter. Then, for what should we endure? ”read the statement, posted on Navalny’s Instagram page.
In the video, Navalny’s team once again urged supporters 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, ”says a small message at the beginning of the video.