Russian Authorities
Amnesty: Russia may be ‘slowly’ killing Alexey Navalny
Alexey Navalny, the prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture and may slowly be killing him, human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Navalny, who last year was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, was now being subjected to sleep deprivation and did not have access to a doctor he could trust in jail, it said. “Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said ahead of the publication of the group’s annual report. “Clearly the Russian authorities are violating his rights. We have to do more,” she said. “[They] have already attempted to kill him, they are n...
Russia issues arrest warrant for Alexei Navalny ally
Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Leonid Volkov, a close ally of poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, according to a media report. Mr Volkov had been organising protests from his base in Lithuania to demand the release of the opposition leader, who was detained last month as he entered Russia. A protest was planned for this Sunday, with Mr Volkov urging people to gather near their homes and light candles in heart shapes to flood social media. “You will raise your phone flashlights – and someone, maybe, will bring candles – and form a heart shape with them.. You will take a picture of it from above, from one of the apartments, and post it on Instagram,” he wrote in a Facebook post promoting the demonstration. His actions have angered Russian authorities, who have been granted an ar...
