Navalny's death: Eight EU states, Romania included, ask for new sanctions against Russia

  Eight EU member states, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden asked for new sanctions against Russia following opposition leader Alexei Navalny's death, EFE agency wrote on Thursday.   “Navalny's death is another sign of accelerated and systematic repression in Russia. We must intensify our efforts so that Russia's political leadership and its authorities could be accounted for and we should impose more costs for their actions, including by sanctions,” foreign ministersof the eight countries note in a letter sent to the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell on Wednesday and consulted by the Spanish news agency.   The eight ministers expressed their support for the suggestion made by Borrell last week to sanction new persons and entities made on account n EU sanctions against infringing human rights and that series of sanctions were against Navalny. Moreover, the ministers of the eight states suggested the creation of sanctions “conceived to approach the situation in Russia”, which should complete the one EU already has in force for the application of restrictive measures against Russia as a result of the Ukraine war.   Criteria to include new persons in such a new regime of sanctions must include “the deterioration of the situation of human rights, politicization of judicial power and repression, including actions that undermine democracy and the rule of law,”, the same ministers suggested in the letter addressed to Borrell.   The funeral and burrial of the Russian activist Alexei Navalny will take place on Friday, in Moscow. He died suddenly on February 16, aged 47, in the prison from the arctic refion where he underwent a detention of 19 years. Causes of his death have not been mentioned yet. According to people close to him the death certificate mentioned natural causes.   On the day prior to his death he had participated in a video court interrogation and did not say anything about his health. However, at various hearings in his trials in which he participated in the last months, Navalny seemed weak and old. He had many health problems because of a hunger strike and poisoning in 2020 which he miraculously survived.   The Russian activist denunced his numerous trials as political, considering them a way of punishment for his opposition against president Vladimir Putin.   Navalny, about whom the Kremlin said he worked for the American CIA, accused Putin of having ordered FSB to poison him in August 2020 with the chemical substance Noviciok. Transferred to a hospital in Germany after the poisoning, the Russian opposition leader returned to Moscw in January 2021, although he was aware he risked to be arrested.   Although he was in prison, he regularly sent messages on social media, often ironical against Putin and the administration, in which he usually criticized the Russian power.