On 16 February 2024, exactly three years after the European Court of Human Rights had ordered Russia to release Alexei Navalny from detention due to a risk to his life, the leader of the Russian democratic opposition died in the remote maximum security prison camp FKU IK-3 penal colony. His arbitrary detention on fabricated charges and the 2020 assassination attempt with a nerve agent, orchestrated by an FSB death squad, leave little doubt that Vladimir Putin’s regime bears full responsibility for his death.
Mr Navalny’s death comes at a time when the Russian invaders are still waging their war of aggression against Ukraine; Russian civil society is essentially forced to work underground and the number of political prisoners in Russia is constantly rising. Political prisoners include not only Vladimir Kara-Murza – a well-known Russian opposition politician and associate of the assassinated politician Boris Nemtsov, and Ilya Yashin, another high-profile opposition figure, but also ordinary people brave enough to object to the war. Clearly, the sanctions imposed on Russia by the international community are still insufficient to counter its totalitarian leadership.
The Parliamentary Assembly should consider new ways to stop Russia’s war machine and ensure that the Russian State, its leaders and enablers of Vladimir Putin’s apparatus of oppression are fully held to account for their brazen contempt of human rights and the international legal order. The Assembly should find ways to establish dialogue with the legitimate representatives of the Russian people opposing the Putin regime. The Assembly owes it to the memory of Alexei Navalny to follow the unfolding information surrounding his death and draw the necessary conclusions, including the possible need for additional and more stringent sanctions to deter and weaken the regime’s criminal repressive apparatus and to hinder the pursuit of the war of aggression against Ukraine.