WASHINGTON, February 16. /TASS/. Washington is considering "a whole number of options" following the death of Russian blogger Alexey Navalny in prison, US President Joe Biden said.
"We are looking at a whole number of options," he said when asked, if the US could toughen sanctions against Russia due to Navalny’s death.
He said that the US administration doesn’t have information about the causes of Navalny’s death but placed the blame for it on Russia’s leadership. "The answer is we don't know exactly what happened. But there is no doubt that the death of the volunteer was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did," he said.
The Federal Penitentiary Service’s Directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region said on February 16 that Navalny had died in penal colony No.3 on February 16. According to the penitentiary authority, Navalny felt sick after a walk and fainted. Medics arrived immediately but their more than 30-minute resuscitation efforts failed. The Public Monitoring Commission of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region said that Navalny had not complained either about his health or about his incarceration conditions. The region’s human rights ombudsperson also said Navalny made no complaints.
Meanwhile, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov slammed the West’s statements concerning Navalny’s death as rabid and totally inadmissible, bearing in mind that there is no official information about the cause of his death.