A groundswell of pressure is being mounted from many countries in Europe on Russia over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, many of them summoning diplomats in their countries to explain the situation.
Apart from the United Kingdom government, other countries seeking full explanations over the death of the 47-year-old strong opposition leader, serving a 19-year sentence, said to have occurred in a Russian prison include Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Navalny, who created an uproar across the world when he nearly died of poisoning in 2020, was said to have died in a remote prison in the Arctic, on Friday, an incident many Western countries, which accused Kremlin of the poisoning incident, blame on Moscow.
The incident, coming a month ahead of presidential elections, which incumbent Vladimir Putin is favoured to win, has further hit a heavy blow on the opposition politics in the country, as Navalny is seen as rallying point against the Russian strongman.
However, Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the Russian opposition leader, was quoted as vowing on Monday to carry on her husband’s work, saying she would continue to fight for the freedom of Russians and the country, calling on the people to stand with her as the struggle moved into the next stage.
“It is terrible that Alexei Navalny has paid the ultimate price for his fight for a free and democratic Russia,” Hanke Bruins Slot, the Netherlands’ foreign affairs minister, posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“This afternoon, I summoned the Russian ambassador to the ministry to demand clarification on his death,” she said late Monday. “We strongly urge Russia to release Navalny’s body to his family and relatives.”
It came with Minister Tobias Billstrom Foreign Minister of Sweden who made the same claim on Monday, saying in a statement he had summoned Russia’s ambassador, and called for the European Union to consider “a new sanctions regime targeting the internal repression in Russia.”
Earlier before then, Jose Manuel Albares, Foreign Minister of Spain, had said on Friday, that his country was demanding that the circumstances of the death be clarified.