Navalny marks anniversary of poisoning with anti-corruption call
MOSCOW — Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny marked the anniversary of the poisoning attack against him by urging global leaders to put more attention on combating corruption and to target tycoons close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In an article published in three European newspapers Friday, Navalny chided Western leaders for relegating the fight against corruption to a “secondary agenda” item and said graft plays an essential part in policy failures, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It is precisely the fact that the West ‘failed to notice’ the total corruption in Afghanistan — that Western leaders preferred not to talk about a topic they found embarrassing — which was the most crucial factor in the victory of the Taliban,” Navalny wrote.
The United States and Britain on Friday announced sanctions against Russian officers and labs accused of involvement in Navalny’s poisoning with a nerve agent Aug. 20, 202, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for his release from prison.
Putin strongly rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s treatment, denying that he was punished for defying the Kremlin.
“He was convicted of a criminal offense, not his political activities,” Putin said.
Navalny was arrested in January upon returning to Moscow from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian officials reject the accusation.
The politician and anti-corruption activist, who is Putin’s most determined political foe, received a 2½-year prison sentence in February for violating the terms of a suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he dismissed as politically motivated.
On Friday, British newspaper The Guardian, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and France’s Le Monde published Navalny’s article, in which he called corruption “the universal, ideology-free basis for the flourishing of a new Authoritarian International, from Russia to Eritrea, Myanmar to Venezuela.”
He challenged international leaders to show a stronger political will to track financial trails from Russia and other countries beset by corruption and to more resolutely target corrupt officials.
“Until personal sanctions are imposed on oligarchs, primarily those in the entourage of Putin — the role model for all the world’s corrupt officials and businessmen — any anti-corruption rhetoric from the West will be perceived as game-playing and hot air,” Navalny said.