World Leaders Fail to Rescue Jailed Kremlin Critic Alexei Navalny
The world leaders have completely failed to tame and punish Putin and get Navalny released from detention.
By Rakesh Raman
Russia has added jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s political network to the ‘Terrorist and Extremist’ list. Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) said Friday (April 30) that “Navalny Networks” now appears on its searchable database of groups and persons with links to terrorist activities, which includes al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic State.
The draconian action against Navalny has been taken despite a slew of sanctions and censure statements by the U.S. and European leaders against Russia.
It shows that such weak-kneed measures against Russia do no work. Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to work in a dictatorial manner and ignores the feeble punitive actions taken by the world community against his despotic decisions. In other words, the world leaders have completely failed to tame and punish Putin and get Navalny released from detention.
It is alleged that after sending him to jail under frivolous charges, the Russian regime is slowly trying to murder Navalny, who is serving a torturous prison sentence near Moscow.
As Navalny, 44, is perhaps the only leader who can challenge Putin’s attempt to rule forever, it is believed that the Putin regime is trying to kill him slowly in jail. Putin has signed a new legislation that will allow him to stay in power until 2036, while his second consecutive and fourth overall presidential term ends in 2024.
In order to terrorize Navalny and his supporters, Russia’s state financial watchdog has designated the “Social Movement Navalny’s Campaign Offices” as extremist entities, although Navalny’s chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, has said previously that there is no legal entity called the “Social Movement Navalny’s Campaign Offices.”
According to a report in The Moscow Times, the designation means that authorities can block the organization’s bank accounts. A Moscow court ruling banning the network’s crowdfunded work, as well as Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), as “extremist” organizations is also expected.
According to reports, the ruling would ban Navalny’s nationwide network of about 50 regional headquarters from operating and put members and supporters at risk of long jail terms.
In response, Navalny’s supporters indicate that in order to continue their struggle against the Putin regime, they will transform the structures of their organizations. It is believed that the court ruling will not affect the “Smart Voting” strategy that aims to defeat pro-Putin ruling party incumbents in this fall’s key parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile, the European leaders are still issuing some meaningless statements against Putin and his regime. They have refused to learn that such statements and parliamentary resolutions won’t deter Putin.
In a statement issued on April 30, the Members of European Parliament (MEPs) said that Russian authorities and President Putin are fully responsible for the fate of Navalny. But these naive MEPs failed to offer any strategy to get Navalny released from prison.
With a separate statement released on April 30, the European leaders condemned the decision of the Russian authorities to ban eight European Union nationals from entering the Russian territory.
They include the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli, Vice President of the European Commission Věra Jourová, as well as six EU Member States’ officials.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
