MUNICH, February 16. /TASS/. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that he is "deeply saddened" by the death of Alexey Navalny and called on the Russian authorities to establish all the details of what happened.
"I am deeply saddened and concerned about the reports, coming from Russia," Stoltenberg said. "All the facts have to be established, and Russia has serious questions to answer," he added. "NATO and allies have called for his immediate release for a long time," the secretary general noted.
The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, also made a statement on Navalny's death, holding the Russian authorities responsible for the incident even before any kind of investigation or cause of death was announced. "The EU holds the Russian regime for sole responsible for this tragic death," he said on his X (formerly Twitter). Michel expressed condolences to Navalny's family.
In turn, President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola wrote on X that she was "horrified by the death of Sakharov Prize laureate Alexey Navalny."
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called Navalny's death a huge tragedy for Russia in a post on X, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, at a joint conference with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Berlin, said he was saddened by the news.
French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejournet expressed condolences to Navalny's family, relatives and the Russian people. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an investigation into the circumstances of Navalny's death.
Navalny’s death
According to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Alexey Navalny, who was serving his prison term at Penal Colony No. 3, felt ill after a walk on February 16, and collapsed. Although medical workers and the ambulance team that arrived at the scene did everything possible to resuscitate him, their efforts were in vain. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Navalny’s death had been reported to President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, twice sentenced to probation earlier, was put on a wanted list for repeatedly violating his probation in the Yves Rocher case. On February 2, 2021, a Moscow court sentenced him to real prison time in lieu of his suspended sentence. He was also found guilty of contempt of court and election campaign fundraising fraud in March 2022 and of creating an extremist community in August 2023.