During the evening of Wednesday 8 February, the European Union spoke out against the five-year suspended prison sentence against Alexei Navalny, the main opponent of Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
In a press release, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service (EEAS) said that the verdict of the Leninsky Court in Kirov handed down earlier that day against Navalny on charges of embezzlement "attempts to silence yet another independent political voice in the Russian Federation".
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights had ruled that Navalny had been denied the right to a fair trial in his prosecution in 2013 for the same charges. The same court condemned Russia on 2 February this year following multiple arrests of Navalny (see EUROPE 11717).
The Russian judiciary's latest verdict, "which effectively excludes Mr Navalny from the political arena, further constrains political pluralism in Russia and raises serious questions as to the fairness of democratic processes in Russia", the EEAS spokesperson stated.
Navalny has announced that he is still a candidate for the Russian presidential election in 2018, even if this sentence makes him ineligible. He is relying on his appeals having suspensory effect in order to be eligible in March 2018. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)