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European Parliament calls for international investigation of Navalny incident

According to European MPs, this must be part of the response to the Navalny incident, which should be investigated on an international level with the participation of all possible states where Western countries have an influence

BRUSSELS, September 17. /TASS/. The European Parliament (EP) has approved a resolution on Thursday on the relations with Russia following the incident with Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny. The document offers EU institutions to demand that Moscow repeal or amend certain laws, including the recent changes to the Russian Constitution.

According to European MPs, this must be part of the response to the Navalny incident, which should be investigated on an international level with the participation of all possible states where Western countries have an influence.

The EP deemed the incident an "attempted assassination," stating that it was "part of a systemic effort to silence him and other dissident voices, and to deter him and those voices from further exposing serious corruption in the regime and deter political opposition in the country in general, in particular with a view to influencing Russia’s local and regional by-elections of 11-13 September."

Resolutions of the European Parliament are of a recommendatory nature even for EU institutions.

The EP also calls "to prioritise the approval of the EU Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions mechanism and its implementation in the near future, which will include a list of individuals and could also include sectoral sanctions aimed at the Russian regime."

"[The EP] calls on the Foreign Affairs Council to take an active stance on this matter at its meeting on 21 September; demands that the EU establishes as soon as possible a list of ambitious restrictive measures vis-a-vis Russia and strengthens its existing sanctions against Russia; urges the deployment of such sanctions mechanisms as would allow for the collection and freezing of the European assets of corrupt individuals in accordance with the findings of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation," the resolution reads.

Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on the Tomsk-Moscow flight. He fell into a coma and was hooked up to a ventilator in the intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to the Charite hospital in Berlin. On September 2, the German government claimed that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok-type toxic agent.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said later that Russia is ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He noted that before Navalny was transferred to Berlin, no toxic substances had been found in his system. For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the German Foreign Ministry did not provide any evidence of the alleged poisoning to the Russian ambassador.