European Union urged to stop its ‘appeasement’ of Putin
A top ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Europe to stop its “appeasement” of President Vladimir Putin and to impose sanctions on the Russian leader and his entourage. AFP reported.
Leonid Volkov was speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where he joined Navalny’s daughter Daria as she collected a top rights prize awarded to her father.
“Appeasement has been tried many times and was fruitless. Let’s try something else,” Volkov said.
Volkov pointed to the West’s reaction to a build-up of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine that has sparked fears the Kremlin could be planning a fresh invasion of its neighbor.
The US and European allies have pledged “massive” economic consequences if Russia sends in troops, but Western leaders have also scrambled to speak to Putin to try to stave off the crisis.
“This build-up on the borders of Ukraine is pure blackmail — ‘If you don’t talk to me, if President Biden doesn’t call me, I’ll start a new bloodbath in Europe’,” Volkov said.
“Sanction them for the blackmail, for the military build-up and then remove it when they retract the troops.”
Navalny — Putin’s highest-profile domestic opponent — has been in jail since January after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning attack with a Novichok nerve agent he blames on the Kremlin.
Russia has since declared the anti-graft campaigner’s organizations and nationwide network of political offices “extremist” and many of his top allies have fled the country.
Authorities have also launched a slew of new probes against him, including a new “extremism” investigation in September that could see him spend up to a decade more in jail.
Volkov, who now lives outside Russia, insisted that Navalny was Putin’s “personal prisoner” and it was up to the Russian leader when he would be freed.
“If the situation will change that at some point of time for some reason, he’ll decide it’s better for me now to release him than to keep him in prison, then he will release him immediately,” Volkov said.
“What could influence such a situation? Well, as we suggest, go after Putin’s money, take his money hostage. This will allow Europe, like the West, to build much better leverage.”