The West does not care about the fate of Alexei Navalny despite the statements about the recent court verdict against him. It is using his case as a pretext to impose sanctions against Russia as they did in the past, like 2011, 2016 and 2020.
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Alexei Navalny and sanctions against Russia.
Alexei Navalny was arrested and shortly after sentenced to prison following his return to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for poisoning with a Novichok-type chemical nerve agent. The European Union has condemned his arrest and demanded his immediate release.
Navalny was sentenced to three and a half years in prison as a Moscow court ruled in favour of the prosecution’s accusation that Mr. Navalny had violated parole on a prison sentence that he received in 2014. He and his brother were convicted of stealing about $500,000 from two companies. However, this was a conviction that the European Court of Human Rights called “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”.
This is one of the reasons that many Western officials have called for the immediate release of Mr. Navalny. Additionally, Alexei Navalny is an independent Russian politician, not a pawn of any foreign government. His decision to return to Russia is related to his refusal to become an exile and to internal deliberations of his political movement, not to any order from abroad.
See related disinformation cases alleging that the US hopes that the Navalny case will lead to the cancellation of Nord Stream 2; the West will falsely accuse Russia of poisoning Navalny as with Skripal and Litvinenko; the West has an interest in the death of Navalny to launch a new wave of sanctions against Russia.