“Media Freedom Prize”
Navalnaya and Navalny are honored for courage against Putin
April 7, 2024, 9:04 a.m
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At the Ludwig Erhard Summit this year, Julia Navalnaya and her late husband Alexei Navalny will be honored for their courage in the fight against Putin’s regime. Friedrich Merz will give the laudatory speech. The event makes a statement by not inviting certain parties.
This year’s “Media Freedom Prize” goes to Yulia Navalnaya and posthumously to Alexei Navalny. The award ceremony will take place at the Ludwig Erhard Summit. Navalnaya will accept the award personally. The laudatory speech will be given by CDU leader Friedrich Merz. The organizer of the political and economic congress, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is the Weimer Media Group (WMG).
The jury’s statement states: “Julia Navalnaya is the brave leading figure of the resistance movement in Russia. After the death of her husband Alexei, who died on February 16, 2024 in a Siberian prison camp at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s torture henchmen, she is the leader of the democratic awakening in Russia . For many years, the Navalnys have been the most prominent opposition activists in Putin’s despotism. In a speech to the European Parliament, Navalnaya warned the world about Putin, who was ‘not a politician, but a bloodthirsty monster’. The free world is calling on them because of Putin for his war of aggression on Ukraine. The Navalny couple are being honored for their brave and non-violent fight against a brutal dictatorship in Russia. They are the faces of a better, new, free and democratic Russia. They are resistance heroes of our time who are ready are to sacrifice their lives for a better world.”
The “Media Freedom Prize” goes to public figures who make a special commitment to freedom of expression, political dialogue and democracy. In 2023, Garry Kasparov was honored, in previous years Volodymyr Zelenskyj and Mikhail Gorbachev were among others. In addition to the award ceremony, the party leaders’ TV arena is another program highlight of the summit.
On the third day of the conference, Saskia Esken, federal chair of the SPD, Ricarda Lang, federal chair of Alliance 90/The Greens, Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy chair of the Free Democrats and Friedrich Merz, CDU chair, will discuss the important issues of our time.
Media partner ntv will broadcast the event live. Representatives of the AfD, the Left and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance are not invited. “The Ludwig Erhard Summit is an open platform for the broad middle. We do not offer extremists, enemies of democracy and opponents of the European Union a stage. With this summit we are consciously committing ourselves to Europe,” say the host publisher of WMG Christiane Goetz -Weimer and Wolfram Weimer made the positioning clear before the start of the summit.