The widow of politician Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, and the politician’s associates Maria Pevchikh and Leonid Volkov met with the President of the European Council Charles Michel in Brussels. Footage from the beginning of the meeting was shown by SkyNews TV channel.
Yulia Navalnaya also spoke at a meeting of the EU Council on Foreign Affairs.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, tweeted: “We expressed our deepest condolences to Yulia Navalnaya. Vladimir Putin and his regime will be held responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny. As Yulia said, Putin is not Russia, and Russia is not Putin. We will continue to support Russian civil society and independent media.”
We expressed the EU’s deepest condolences to Yulia Navalnaya
Vladimir Putin & his regime will be held accountable for the death of Alexei @navalny
As Yulia said, Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin
We will continue our support to Russia’s civil society & independent media pic.twitter.com/LbXNerR9nI
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) February 19, 2024
Borrell announced Navalnaya’s meeting with the heads of the EU foreign ministries on the afternoon of February 19. He told reporters that in a symbolic move, Brussels would rename its sanctions regime for human rights violations after Alexei Navalny.
According to Borrell, the EU has already introduced “unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, including against Putin, because of the invasion of Ukraine.» He admitted that after the murder of Navalny, the European Union “will be difficult to impose new serious sanctions.”
After the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District announced on February 16 that Navalny had died in a colony, his wife Yulia made an appeal at the Munich conference on security.
“I want Putin, everyone around him, Putin’s friends, his government, to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband,” — said Navalnaya. Today she recorded a video message in which she said that she would continue her husband’s work after his murder in custody.