Geneva:
President Vladimir Putin stated Wednesday that jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny ignored Russian law when he went to Germany for remedy following a close to-fatal poisoning attack last year.
Navalny, a longtime anti-corruption and political campaigner, was arrested in January following he returned to Russia following months of remedy in Germany for a nerve agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin.
“This person knew that he was breaking the law in Russia,” Putin stated following a summit meeting with US President Joe Biden in Geneva, in reference to Navalny violating the circumstances of a suspended sentence.
“Consciously ignoring the requirements of the law, he went abroad for treatment,” Putin stated, accusing Navalny of possessing “deliberately acted to be detained”.
Navalny was subsequently jailed for two-and-a-half years on old fraud charges and his organisations banned as “extremist”, barring members and sponsors from operating in parliamentary elections in September.
Putin stated Navalny’s anti-graft group “publicly called for riots, involved minors in riots” and “publicly described how to make Molotov cocktails”.
Russian authorities have also piled stress this year on independent media, with numerous outlets declared “foreign agents” and US-funded Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe facing a flurry of massive fines.
Putin has in turn accused Washington of “double standards” and of searching for to interfere in Russian domestic affairs.
He defended protesters who stormed the US Capitol, saying they had reputable political demands, and stated he would not be lectured on human rights by Washington.
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