A top aide to jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny announced he will take a break from his work at the Anti-Corruption Foundation and apologized for writing a letter to the European Union asking for sanctions on billionaire Mikhail Fridman and his partners to be lifted.
(Bloomberg) — A top aide to jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny announced he will take a break from his work at the Anti-Corruption Foundation and apologized for writing a letter to the European Union asking for sanctions on billionaire Mikhail Fridman and his partners to be lifted.
Leonid Volkov, chairman of the board of Navalny’s foundation, said he made a “big political mistake” by writing to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, in October requesting sanctions relief for the Alfa Group partners.
“I overstepped my authority by signing it not in my personal capacity but on behalf of the organization,” Volkov wrote in a Telegram post.
“I did not notify my colleagues.”
Volkov called on the EU to widen sanctions to better target the inner circle around President Vladimir Putin while providing an exit strategy for tycoons who came out against the war, according to the letter, which Bloomberg News first disclosed.
He highlighted Fridman and his partners as the type of businessmen who deserved relief from the punitive measures.
Fridman decried Russia’s invasion of Ukraine days after it happened in February 2022, calling it a “tragedy” and saying “war can never be the answer.” But he refrained from directly criticizing Putin.
Fridman’s lawyers sent a number of letters from other Russian opposition activists to the EU in support of lifting sanctions on the businessman, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper shuttered by the Kremlin, and jailed activist Ilya Yashin.
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