The demand of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to release the founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK, included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent) Alexei Navalny is an attempt to put pressure on Russia in order to realize its interests. This statement was answered to the Europeans by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, RIA Novosti reports.
“Very often, Western partners – I say again, this whole campaign is, of course, the very collective West – they, in the heat of realizing their interests, do not think about the consequences, including for their own countries,” Zakharova said and stressed. that the Russian state will not leave unnoticed an attempt to put pressure on it.
She added that the ECHR's demand “violates the foundations of international law”, as it was drawn up without reference to legal norms.
Earlier, the ECHR demanded that the Russian government release Navalny from prison as an interim measure. The appeal was filed on January 20, even before the replacement of the suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case with a real one. It was formulated on the basis of Rule 39 of the ECHR Rules. Commenting on this decision, the head of the Russian Ministry of Justice, Konstantin Chuichenko, said that it was deliberately impracticable.
In 2014, Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months' suspended imprisonment with a fine of 500 thousand rubles for fraud. The court later extended the probationary period for a year. In 2017, the ECHR, at the request of the Navalny brothers, decided that Russia had violated a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to them in the Yves Rocher case. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Russia resumed the proceedings due to the decision of the ECHR, but upheld the verdict. On February 2 this year, Navalny's suspended sentence in this case was changed to a real one after the FSIN announced numerous violations of the suspended sentence.
