Alexei Navalny's death and the need to counter Vladimir Putin's totalitarian regime and its war on democracy
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly
debate on 17 April 2024 (11th sitting) (see Doc. 15966, report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human
Rights, rapporteur: Mr Emanuelis Zingeris). Text
adopted by the Assembly on 17 April 2024 (11th sitting).
1. The Parliamentary Assembly pays
tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Alexei Navalny, a leading Russian
opposition politician, civil society activist, anti-corruption campaigner
and political prisoner persecuted, and ultimately killed, by the
Russian State for his opposition to Vladimir Putin’s regime. The
Assembly expresses its heartfelt condolences to the family, associates
and supporters of Mr Navalny.
2. Vladimir Putin has been in power in the Russian Federation
as president or prime minister without interruption since 2000,
and the amendments to the Russian Constitution adopted in July 2020
and recognised as illegitimate by the European Commission for Democracy
through Law (Venice Commission) and the Assembly allow him to remain
in office until 2036. Since coming to power, Vladimir Putin has
been constructing a regime whose aim is to wage a war against democracy
and redraw the European and global order established after the collapse
of the former Soviet Union. The occupation of Transnistria, the
invasion of Georgia in 2008, the war in Ukraine since 2014, the
illegal annexation and occupation of territories, the destruction
of freedom of expression inside the Russian Federation, the disinformation
war around the world, the persecution and assassination of its political
opponents inside and outside the Russian Federation and the creation
of a system of legislation that criminalises political views are
just a few of the features of Vladimir Putin’s regime. The unlawful
imprisonment and, as a result, the death of Alexei Navalny are a
continuation of the policy of Vladimir Putin’s regime and its war
against democracy.
3. On 16 February 2024, Mr Navalny died in a remote Siberian
maximum security prison camp, FKU IK-3, where he was serving a manifestly
arbitrary prison sentence. The official cause of his death was “sudden
death syndrome”. Mr Navalny’s family was prevented from gaining
rapid and timely access to his body or having an independent autopsy
carried out. Allegations emerged that Mr Navalny had been ill-treated
by prison staff the day before his death. Three days after Mr Navalny’s
death, the deputy director of the Russian prison service, Valery
Boyarinev, was promoted to the rank of colonel general. Several
days later, Roman Vidyukov, the chief investigator in cases against
Mr Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation, was promoted to deputy
head of the State Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.
On 18 March 2024, Vladimir Putin claimed that he had agreed to release
the opposition leader in a prisoner exchange days before he died
– a claim that Mr Navalny’s family strongly rejects.
4. During the three years of his unlawful imprisonment, imposed
in blatant disregard of the Russian Federation’s obligations under
Articles 3, 5, 6, 7, 18, 34 and 46 of the European Convention on
Human Rights (ETS No. 5), under the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights and under the United Nations Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,
Mr Navalny was subjected to systemic torture and other forms of
ill-treatment, such as the denial of sleep, repeated placement in
an isolation cell in inhuman and degrading conditions and lack of
access to proper medical care.
5. The Assembly considers that the Russian State bears full responsibility
for the killing of Alexei Navalny, who was subjected to torture,
inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of the judgments and
interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights, and who
had moreover survived an assassination attempt with a chemical weapon,
perpetrated in 2020 by a squad of assassins of the Russian Federation’s
Federal Security Service (FSB).
6. Mr Navalny has become the latest critic of Vladimir Putin
to die at the hands of, or with at least the tacit approval of,
the Russian apparatus of oppression. For the past two decades, individuals
who have opposed Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on the Russian Federation
have been killed, usually with the involvement of the Russian secret
services or persons acting at their behest. The list of the regime’s
victims includes, among others, journalists Anna Politkovskaya,
Natalia Estemirova, Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova; Sergei
Magnitsky – a lawyer murdered for exposing large-scale corruption
among the highest echelons of the Russian Government; Alexander
Litvinenko – a former FSB officer who had defected to the United
Kingdom; and Boris Nemtsov – a deputy prime minister who had challenged
Vladimir Putin’s rule and whose circumstances of death remain unclear,
as noted by the Assembly in its
Resolution 2297 (2019) “Shedding
light on the murder of Boris Nemtsov”. Hundreds more innocent human
rights defenders and opposition figures remain imprisoned on trumped-up
charges and can be considered political prisoners as defined by
Resolution 1900 (2012) “The
definition of political prisoner”, including Vladimir Kara-Murza,
Ilya Yashin and Oleg Orlov. An independent journalist who covered
the trial of Mr Navalny and recorded his final court appearance
on 15 February 2024, Antonina Favorskaya, was arbitrarily detained
on charges of “extremism” and faces a lengthy prison sentence. The
human rights organisation OVD-Info reports that there are now over
1 000 political prisoners in the Russian Federation.
7. The Assembly deplores that acts of torture such as those to
which Mr Navalny was exposed are systemically applied against political
prisoners in the Russian Federation, Ukrainian political prisoners
illegally detained in Russian prisons since 2014 and Ukrainian prisoners
of war, as stated in its
Resolution
2528 (2024) “Allegations of systemic torture and inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment in places of detention in Europe”.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission
in Ukraine, the majority of Ukrainians in Russian captivity have
been subjected to torture, rape, threats of sexual violence, deprivation
of food and sleep and other forms of ill-treatment.
8. The Assembly recalls that the obligation to take effective
legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent
acts of torture, as enshrined in Article 2.1 of the United Nations
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, is unconditional and that no exceptional
circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of
war, internal political instability or any other public emergency,
may be invoked as a justification for torture.
9. Some of the persons directly responsible for and participating
in the persecution and torture of Alexei Navalny are well known.
A detailed list can be found via this link: “Navalny list”. It includes
prison staff, police officers, prosecutors and judges involved in
their respective roles in the gross abuse of the Russian justice system
for the purpose of punishing Mr Navalny for his political activism
and creating a chilling effect within Russian society.
10. On 13 October 2023 and in the following days, an open attack
on Alexei Navalny’s lawyers began: Alexei Lipster, Vadim Kobzev
and Igor Sergunin were detained on remand in Moscow. Olga Mikhailova
(a senior lawyer representing Alexei Navalny) and Alexander Fedulov,
who were abroad at the time, were subject to an arrest warrant.
Criminal cases on trumped-up charges have been initiated against
them and some of their offices were searched, in manifest breach
of legal professional privilege, establishing an even more hostile environment
for providing an effective legal defence in the Russian Federation.
11. The persons on the Navalny list should be included as named
individuals on the sanctions lists that are or may be established
under existing and future Magnitsky-type sanctions laws.
12. Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russian Federation has become
a de facto dictatorship. Not
only has it stifled democratic opposition inside the Russian Federation,
but it has also failed to respect the democratic choices of neighbouring
States and their political independence. By invading Georgia in
2008, unlawfully annexing the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and
the City of Sevastopol, and violently occupying parts of the Donetsk
and Luhansk oblasts in 2014, interfering in foreign electoral processes
and, finally, by launching its full-scale war of aggression against
Ukraine in February 2022 and threatening those assisting Ukraine’s
self-defence with nuclear war, the regime of Vladimir Putin has
fully committed to war on democracy. By doing so, it seeks to re-establish
the former Soviet sphere of influence and take revenge on States
which rejected its totalitarianism in favour of democracy and human
rights.
13. Vladimir Putin’s regime has committed to the neo-imperialistic
ideology of Russkiy Mir (the
“Russian world”), which the Kremlin has turned into a tool for promoting
war. This ideology is being used to destroy the remnants of democracy,
to militarise Russian society and to justify external aggression
to expand the Russian Federation’s borders to include all territories
once under Russian domination, including Ukraine. The hierarchy of
the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, including
Patriarch Kirill, has been championing the Russkiy
Mir ideology, declaring the war against Ukraine and the
“satanic” West as a “holy war of all Russians”, urging Orthodox
believers to sacrifice themselves for their country. The Assembly
is appalled by such an abuse of religion and the distortion of the
Christian Orthodox tradition by Vladimir Putin’s regime and its
proxies in the Moscow Patriarchate hierarchy. The Assembly condemns
such rhetoric and emphasises that incitement to commit the crime
of aggression, genocide and war crimes is a crime in itself. The
Assembly calls on all States to treat Patriarch Kirill and the Russian
Orthodox hierarchy as an ideological extension of Vladimir Putin’s
regime complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity conducted
in the name of the Russian Federation and the Russkiy
Mir ideology.
14. On 17 March 2024, Vladimir Putin was declared the winner of
the so-called presidential election, which from the outset was not
free and fair, with no genuine opponent to Vladimir Putin even being
permitted to run. Moreover, polling stations for this election were
opened in sovereign Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by
the Russian Federation and in the Moldovan Administrative-Territorial
Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester River, in gross violation
of the United Nations Charter and the principles of sovereignty,
political independence and territorial integrity of all States.
15. In line with its Resolution 2519 (2023) “Examining the legitimacy
and legality of the ad hominem term-limit waiver for the incumbent
President of the Russian Federation”, the Assembly does not recognise
the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin as the President of the Russian
Federation and reiterates its call to Council of Europe member and
observer States and the European Union to cease all contact with
him, except for humanitarian purposes and in the pursuit of peace.
The Assembly recalls that the abolition of presidential term limits
for the benefit of Vladimir Putin violates not only the Russian
Constitution but also well-established international legal principles.
16. The Assembly considers that the Russian Federation has gradually
transformed into a State which today bars the existence of any political
opposition. By means of fascist-style propaganda, it has introduced
a cult of personality around the figure of Vladimir Putin. Through
the abuse of the criminal justice system, the regime has suppressed
any political and media pluralism; civil society can no longer exist
except underground; and the regime is enforcing mass conformity,
including through the indoctrination of children. It presents to
its people a dangerous vision of a Russia which rallies around imperialistic
conquest, going as far as to threaten its perceived enemies with
nuclear annihilation. All these phenomena, combined with an omnipresent
security apparatus, mass surveillance of society and brutal repression
against peaceful protests, have turned the Russian Federation into
what the Assembly considers a totalitarian State, whose modus operandi
resembles that of a criminal organisation.
17. As the Russian Federation is a federation only formally, the
regime of Vladimir Putin has also declared war on its own people.
In particular, indigenous peoples and national and ethnic minorities
in the Russian Federation are forcibly Russified and subjected to
repression and discrimination, in violation of the Russian Federation’s
obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. In particular, the Assembly
notes the disproportionately high losses suffered by military units composed
of soldiers conscripted from national, ethnic and indigenous populations.
The Assembly considers this to be a deliberate campaign, aimed at
eliminating national and ethnic diversity within the Russian Federation.
18. The Assembly strongly condemns the Russian Federation’s practice
of including political opponents of the regime on lists of terrorists
and extremists: opposition politicians, cultural figures, journalists
and civil activists, leading to further misuse of the Interpol system.
Vladimir Putin’s order to the Russian FSB to take decisive measures
against the “enemies of the country” both inside and outside of
it is also of great concern. In practice, this could lead to a wave
of politically motivated assassinations and murders on the territory
of Council of Europe member States.
19. Urgent and co-ordinated measures are the only means of countering
Vladimir Putin’s totalitarian regime and its war on democracy. Ukraine
must immediately receive the weapons and ammunition that it needs
to effectively defend itself and to succeed in repelling the Russian
invaders.
20. The Assembly further considers that sanctions against the
Russian Federation must be reinforced to hinder its economy from
continuing to finance its illegal war of aggression. The Assembly
welcomes the proposal by Ms Yuliya Navalnaya to apply the tools
developed for fighting organised crime against the enablers of Vladimir
Putin’s criminal regime, namely to conduct investigations into their
financial machinations and search for their associates, lawyers
and financiers in Council of Europe member States and beyond, in
order to prevent the regime from hiding behind corporate veils and
a network of shell companies.
21. The Assembly deplores the fact that, despite the imposition
of an unprecedented sanctions regime, some of the Russian Federation’s
trading partners continue to enable it to gain access to Western
technologies and capital, allowing it to manufacture cruise missiles
and drones that are used indiscriminately to attack Ukrainian cities,
residential areas, hospitals and critical infrastructures. By way
of example, the Assembly is concerned about the sharp increase in
the import of microchips by Kazakhstan, accompanied by a similar
rise in exports of microchips from Kazakhstan to the Russian Federation.
It is equally alarmed by the large quantities of crude oil being
exported from the Russian Federation to India and then sold onwards
to the West.
22. The Assembly further condemns States that continue to support
the Russian disinformation campaign, in particular by justifying
its manifestly unlawful war of aggression on Ukraine, spread within
various international forums, including the United Nations General
Assembly and Human Rights Council, in particular Belarus, Cuba,
Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, as well as others, thus undermining
democracy worldwide.
23. At the same time, the Assembly welcomes reports that banks
in Armenia, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong have begun refusing payments
from Russian companies for electronics delivered to the Russian
Federation. It encourages all States and financial institutions
to closely monitor all transactions with Russian entities to ensure
the effectiveness of the sanctioning mechanism.
24. The Assembly welcomes the approval on 12 March 2024 of a new
European Union directive to strengthen the enforcement of European
Union sanctions across member States by criminalising the violation and
circumvention of sanctions. It also welcomes the recent inclusion
of dozens of individuals involved in the persecution of Alexei Navalny
in the list of human rights violators condemned under the European
Union human rights sanctions regime, proposed now to be renamed
after Alexei Navalny.
25. The Assembly considers that further restrictions are necessary
to prevent the Russian economy from sustaining the war against Ukraine.
In particular, the Assembly notes that the Russian crude oil price
cap sanctions have had limited effect. Lack of sufficient control
and deterrence mechanisms has permitted the Russian Federation to
mitigate the effects of the sanctions, in particular by using a
fleet of “shadow” tankers and maintaining the price cap on Russian
crude oil at too high a level.
26. The Assembly therefore:
26.1 urges
the Russian Federation to:
26.1.1 allow an independent and
transparent international investigation into Alexei Navalny’s death,
including through an international commission of inquiry, which
could be established by United Nations bodies or other international
organisations;
26.1.2 cease persecuting family members, associates and supporters
of Alexei Navalny in the Russian Federation and abroad;
26.1.3 release all prisoners currently detained in the Russian
Federation for the purpose of silencing them and deterring other
critics of the regime from protesting or speaking out;
26.2 calls on the European Union and all States having Magnitsky-type
targeted sanctions laws to include in their sanctions lists the
persons directly responsible for, and participating in, the persecution, ill-treatment
and death of Alexei Navalny and invites all States that have not
yet adopted such laws to do so without further delay;
26.3 calls on all States to ensure that the Russian Federation
is held accountable for its systemic use of torture and other forms
of ill-treatment to which Mr Navalny and thousands of other prisoners
in the Russian Federation, including Ukrainian prisoners of war,
have been subjected, by having recourse to the dispute settlement
mechanism stipulated in Article 30.1 of the United Nations Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment;
26.4 calls on all States to put pressure on the Russian Federation
to allow independent international bodies to monitor the state of
health and conditions of detention of reported political prisoners,
pending their release or re-examination of their cases;
26.5 encourages member and observer States of the Council of
Europe to pursue prisoner exchanges in order to obtain the release
of political prisoners in the Russian Federation and Belarus, prioritising Vladimir
Kara-Murza and others who have serious health conditions (noting
in particular the potential role of Germany, the United Kingdom
and the United States of America);
26.6 reiterates its call to set up an international mechanism
to compensate the victims of the Russian aggression against Ukraine,
to which frozen Russian assets should be promptly transferred, and
to set up a special international tribunal to investigate and prosecute
the political and military leadership of the Russian Federation
for the crime of aggression against Ukraine;
26.7 calls on the European Union and the G7 to further strengthen
the sanctions regime against the Russian Federation, a State sponsor
of terrorism, in particular by:
26.7.1 lowering the oil
and gas price cap, considering that the revenue from oil and gas
exports is still a significant source of income for the Russian
State budget;
26.7.2 imposing secondary sanctions on States and natural and
legal persons that knowingly enable the Russian Federation to evade
the full effects of sanctions imposed on its economy, including
by exporting technology, munitions, dual-use goods for military
use and other resources used by the Russian Federation to sustain
its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine;
26.7.3 setting up a register of States and natural and legal
persons aiding and abetting the Russian Federation in evading sanctions,
in particular by enabling it to obtain dual-use goods for military
use;
26.7.4 enforcing the existing mandatory “oil spill insurance”
requirements for all tankers passing through their waters to promote
compliance with the price cap sanctions and protect the environment
from oil spills by ageing and insufficiently insured tankers;
26.7.5 cutting off any services provided to the Russian oil and
gas industry in order to restrict its future liquefied natural gas
production and increase the costs of oil extraction in the Russian Federation;
26.7.6 imposing sanctions on the Moscow Exchange as well as Rosatom
– a State-owned nuclear energy monopoly that has taken control of
Europe’s largest nuclear plant in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region,
using this as a tool of blackmail against Europe by raising the
threat of nuclear disaster;
26.7.7 emphasising that under international humanitarian law,
Russian oil refineries are to be considered legitimate targets of
military attacks;
26.8 calls on the United States of America – a Council of Europe
observer State – to ensure that the Senate’s foreign aid bill, which
includes military aid for Ukraine, is put to a vote without further
delay or otherwise to authorise the delivery of the necessary military
and other aid for Ukraine as soon as possible;
26.9 encourages the Council of Europe member and observer States
to share among themselves all intelligence pertaining to the Russian
Federation’s interference in electoral processes, including its disinformation
campaigns, in order to identify and prevent further such practices;
26.10 calls on the Council of Europe member and observer States
and the European Union to strengthen the effects of
Resolution 2519 (2023) by
formally recognising Vladimir Putin’s illegitimacy as President
of the Russian Federation;
26.11 calls on the Council of Europe member States who are
not members of the European Union to align themselves with sanctions
imposed on the Russian Federation and its allies under the European Union
human rights sanctions regime;
26.12 calls on the Council of Europe member and observer States,
the European Union and the United Nations to draw attention to the
numerous violations of human rights and the rights of peoples to
the detriment of the colonised indigenous peoples of the Russian
Federation;
26.13 calls on all States to apply to Vladimir Putin’s regime
the existing anti-money laundering legislation aimed at combating
organised crime and the financing of terrorism, to identify any
private or legal persons that can be classified as enablers and
impose harsh penalties on them, including by confiscating assets;
and in particular to adopt, where lacking, and apply legislation
permitting non-conviction-based confiscation of illegal assets,
with a reversal of the burden of proof, as recommended by the Assembly
in
Resolution 2218 (2018) “Fighting
organised crime by facilitating the confiscation of illegal assets”;
26.14 encourages the Council of Europe member and observer
States and the European Union to recognise that the Russian Orthodox
Church is in fact being used as an instrument of Russian influence and
propaganda by the Kremlin regime and has nothing to do with the
freedom of religion and the freedom of expression guaranteed by
Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
26.15 calls on the Council of Europe member and observer States
and the European Union to strengthen the sanctioning mechanism against
Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime in Belarus, which allowed the Russian
Federation to use its territory for the offensive against Kyiv in
2022 and which continues to support the war of aggression against
Ukraine.
27. The Assembly expresses its solidarity and commitment to pursue
dialogue with Russian and Belarusian democratic forces which share
the values of the Council of Europe and recognise the rules-based
international order, including the respect for the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of Ukraine. In this regard, the Assembly recalls
its decision – set out in its
Resolution
2530 (2024) “A democratic future for Belarus” – to create
a function of a general rapporteur for a democratic Belarus and
to allow a representative delegation of Belarusian democratic forces
to take an active role in some of its work.
28. The Assembly states, to reinforce European Parliament Resolution
of 29 February 2024 on the murder of Alexei Navalny and the need
for EU action in support of political prisoners and oppressed civil
society in Russia (2024/2579(RSP)), that decolonisation of the Russian
Federation is a necessary condition for the establishment of democracy
in the Russian Federation.
29. Likewise, the Assembly welcomes the initiative taken by the
President of the Assembly and endorsed by the Bureau of the Assembly
in October 2023 to set up a contact platform for dialogue with Russian
democratic forces and calls for the creation of a function of a
general rapporteur on the Russian democratic forces.
