The resolution of the European Parliament (EP), adopted on January 21 on the situation with blogger Alexei Navalny, will not affect cooperation between Hungary and Moscow. This was announced on Saturday, January 23, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary Peter Siyjarto.
“All this will not affect either bilateral cooperation between Russia and Hungary, or bilateral cooperation between Russia and any Western European country as a whole,” RBC quotes him.
The minister also pointed out that the topic of Navalny’s detention was not discussed during his visit to Moscow the day before.
“I came here on a very, very important matter: to negotiate the procurement of vaccines for Hungarians to save lives and help the economy recover faster from the constraints. I came to negotiate an extension of the contract that allows us to buy gas from Russia, which accounts for 85% of all gas imports. There are extremely important issues that require discussion at the bilateral level, and Russia’s internal affairs are not part of this agenda, ”Siyarto stressed.
On January 21, the European Parliament called for blocking the construction of Nord Stream 2 due to the situation with Navalny, demanding that the European Union increase restrictions on Moscow, despite the fact that on January 19, the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell had already stated that the European Union cannot interfere with the implementation of the gas pipeline, since this is a project of private companies.
The EP also proposed introducing restrictions against persons who participated in the decision to arrest Navalny. 581 deputies voted for the document, 50 against, and 44 abstained.
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the reaction of Western politicians to the news about Navalny’s return and detention to the Russian Federation is needed to divert attention from the crisis in their own countries, Gazeta.ru writes.
Meanwhile, the resolutions of the European Parliament on international issues are declarative, not binding, but other EU institutions must listen to its opinion.
Blogger Alexei Navalny was detained at Sheremetyevo airport on January 17 after returning from Berlin. According to the Federal Penitentiary Service, the blogger was wanted for multiple violations of the probationary period from December 29, 2020, while the Moscow Federal Penitentiary Service took into account the fact that since August 22 last year, the Russian was treated in the Berlin clinic “Charite”.
The clinic announced his release on September 23, but the blogger did not respond to the notice of his appearance on October 23 and did not appear on registration, according to which he was put on the wanted list.
Only in November did Navalny send a notification to the Federal Penitentiary Service that he lived in Berlin, where he was restoring his health. He did not provide official confirmation of treatment after discharge.
The FSIN reported that it plans to detain Navalny, since the court must decide whether to replace his suspended sentence with a real one due to violations of the conditional sentence.