Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on his colleague from Sweden, OSCE Chairman-in-Office Ann Linde, to honestly discuss the situation around the Alexei Navalny case. TASS quotes him.
“We want to discuss all these issues honestly, openly, without any prejudice, because we, as neighbors, should be interested in normal, good relations. Moreover, the peoples of our countries, especially residents of border areas, are vital interested, “the diplomat emphasized, opening negotiations with the Swedish Foreign Minister.
Lavrov recalled that Stockholm did not respond to Moscow’s request on the grounds on which the Swedish military laboratory had concluded that Navalny was poisoned with a substance from the Novichok group. According to the minister, the colleagues “themselves do not want to be transparent in the conclusions they use to advance the anti-Russian position.”
In mid-January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the West’s statements about Navalny are “like a carbon copy.” According to him, their main goal is to divert attention from the crisis, in which the liberal development model finds itself. At the same time, the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov noted that the Kremlin does not intend to listen to the statements of Western countries regarding the detention and arrest of Navalny.
The detention of Navalny at the Sheremetyevo airport became known on Sunday, January 17. This happened on the basis of the decision of the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service in Moscow, according to which the oppositionist was put on the wanted list for systematic violations of the conditions of the probationary period. On January 18, he was arrested for 30 days. Before his arrest, he was in Berlin, where he was taken on August 22, 2020. Two days earlier, during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny felt unwell, and the plane was urgently landed in Omsk.