The announcement of the death of Alexeï Navalny did not fail to provoke a reaction from the French political class. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, expressed his “anger and indignation”. He wanted to salute the “commitment” and “courage” of Vladimir Putin’s opponent. “In today’s Russia, free spirits are put in the gulag and condemned to death,” he reacted on the social network X. “Thoughts for his family, his loved ones and for the Russian people.
In today’s Russia, free spirits are put in the gulag and sentenced to death. Anger and indignation.
I salute the memory of Alexeï Navalny, his commitment, his courage. Thoughts for his family, his loved ones and for the Russian people.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 16, 2024
“Honor his resistance”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who had described Alexeï Navalny as a “liberal opponent heavily marked by anti-Semitism”, denounced “a crime”, also pointing out “the repression of which the Russian authorities are capable”. “Honor to its resistance,” he wrote on a land of asylum for political opponents now imprisoned in Russia.
“The death of Navalny is unbearable and must make us all angry, (he) today becomes the symbol of resistance to the oppression that Vladimir Putin exercises on his people”, reacted for her part on the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet. “A planned, wanted and provoked death. “Thus end today, in full view of all, the opponents of the dictator,” said Modem leader François Bayrou. “If we can kill a man, we cannot not kill his ideas”, declared the former Horizons Prime Minister and potential candidate for 2027, Édouard Philippe. For the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, “Navalny was murdered by a system which does not allow contradiction “.
Alexei Navalny “paid for his courage with his life”
This disappearance also caused a reaction from the international community, which points to the responsibility of the Russian state in the death of Alexeï Navalny. Joe Biden said on Friday he was “scandalized” by the death of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny, a “powerful voice for the truth”, and affirmed that Russian President Vladimir “Putin was responsible”. “We don’t know exactly what happened,” the American president said during a speech at the White House. “No matter what story they tell, let’s be clear: Russia is responsible,” says US Vice President Kamala Harris.
The European Union holds “the Russian regime” “solely responsible for the tragic death” of the Kremlin opponent, declared the President of the European Council, Charles Michel. The Ukrainian head of state, Volodymyr Zelensky, ruled that Russian President Vladimir Putin should “be held accountable for his crimes”: “It is obvious that he was killed, like thousands of others who were tortured to death because of one person: Putin.
The head of British diplomacy David Cameron warned on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be “accountable” for the death in prison of Alexeï Navalny, paying tribute to the “courage” of the opponent. For the Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, “the death of Alexeï Navalny, during his detention, is a new sad page which represents a new warning for the international community”. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “very saddened” and said Navalny “paid for his courage with his life”. The Russian opponent “has just been brutally assassinated by the Kremlin”, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said on Friday on the social network X.
Several Russian opponents of the Kremlin also reacted to the death of Alexei Navalny. According to the writer Boris Akunin, he has “become immortal”: “He will end up burying Putin.” The 2021 Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dmitri Muratov, on Friday described the death of opponent Alexeï Navalny in prison as “murder” and “scary news”. Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov said Vladimir Putin had “slowly and publicly murdered” his main opponent “for exposing Putin and his mafia as the crooks and thieves they are.”
For its part, the Kremlin assured Friday that Western accusations and criticism of Moscow after the death in prison of the main Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny were “absolutely unacceptable”, while ensuring that it did not immediately know the cause of death. “There is no information on the cause of death and yet such statements follow one another (…) We consider such statements to be absolutely unacceptable,” declared Dmitri Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, quoted by Russian news agencies.