45 countries asked Vladimir Putin for answers on poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny

The West continues to put pressure on Vladimir Putin’s government to explain the poisoning of opposition leader Alexeï Navalny, who is now being held in a prison on the outskirts of Moscow.

In this context, forty-five countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada, on Tuesday called on the global chemical weapons control body for Russia to respond to the attack with the nerve agent Novichok on the Russian activist.

The Government has 10 days to respond to questions posed by countries, according to the rules of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague, according to delegates.

Western countries believe Navalny was poisoned in Russia with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in August of last year. After the attack, the opposition leader received treatment in Germany before returning to Russia, where he has been imprisoned since last January.

Moscow, however, has always denied its involvement.

“Today 45 states … informed the OPCW Executive Council that they would formally ask Russia questions about the poisoning of Navalny under Article 9 of the Convention,” he said. the British delegation said in a tweet.

“Russia has 10 days to respond”he added.

OPCW Executive Council, made up of 41 member states, meets this week to discuss progress in eliminating chemical weapons around the world.

Western states have also called on Russia’s allied Syrian dictatorship to let in weapons inspectors, saying Damascus is still in violation of its obligations to the OPCW.

Last year, Navalny accused President Putin of being the source of his poisoning. Concretely, he accuses him of having ordered his assassination at the Federal Security Service (FSB, ex-KGB).

Russian authorities have denied any involvement and questioned whether he had even been poisoned.. But the very doctors who treated him assured that he was attacked by the nerve agent developed during the Soviet Union. For this reason, Western powers have imposed sanctions on Moscow for its treatment of Navalny.

UN experts have called for an international investigation into his poisoning, and the European Union and the United States have sanctioned senior Russian officials.

The opposition leader was arrested on January 17 upon his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from the poisoning.

Navalny’s arrest sparked large protests in Russia, during which authorities responded with more than 11,000 arrests. The EU and the US, since then, have demanded the “immediate release” of the political prisoner.

The activist was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for an old case of alleged fraud and money laundering, but he will only serve two and a half years, since the ten months he spent under house arrest and the time he spent is net of preventive detention since his arrest.

However, the Russian opponent faces a new criminal investigation for “extremism”, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison., in a new stage of the repression of their movement after the dismantling of their organizations.

The investigations against him and several close collaborators come after the legislative victory of Vladimir Putin’s party, after a campaign to exclude almost all anti-Kremlin candidates from the polls.

The adversary and his allies are now accused of having “Created and led an extremist organization” through its Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) and eight other organizations.

He has also been accused since August of calling on his supporters to commit “illegal acts”, a felony punishable by three years in prison.

According to a statement from the commission of inquiry, in charge of the main investigations in Russia, Navalny and his allies have been accused of “creating and leading an extremist organization” which from 2014 to 2021 called for “a change of power through violence”.

According to investigators, the illegal demonstrations organized by the opposition and its allies involved “Calls for extremist and terrorist actions”.

The charges, which carry a 10 years in prison, they also appoint two of his close collaborators, Leonid Volkov e Ivan Zhdanov.

Other collaborators, including the Muscovite Lioubov Sobol, are accused of “Participation in an extremist organization”, punished by six years in prisonl, according to the same source.

Most of Navalny’s allies are abroad, after fleeing the repression of recent months in Russia, during which several of them were arrested or released on probation.

With information from AFP

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