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Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Alliance 90/The Greens)

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Peter Kneffel/dpa

Federal Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (The Greens) accuses Russian leader Vladimir Putin of murdering Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. “Nawalny is a real hero,” said Habeck in an interview with WELT TV on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. "He was murdered by Putin's regime."

The opposition member consciously took this risk, Habeck continued. "He knew that he could be murdered, perhaps that he would be murdered." After his hospitalization in the Berlin Charité in 2021, German politicians asked Navalny not to return to Moscow because he would die there. “And he did it anyway.”

Navalny's death shows once again "which regime we are dealing with in Moscow," Habeck continued. This organizes the murder of opposition politicians and arrests people who want to quietly commemorate a dead person. The Vice Chancellor was referring to the police repression of mourning events throughout Russia with numerous arrests.

Habeck calls for an end to uranium imports from Russia

All of this has to be a lesson, Habeck continued: "This is of course also a sign for the Munich Security Conference or for Europe and the West not to be naïve."

The Minister of Economic Affairs also spoke out in favor of an end to deliveries of nuclear fuel rods from Russia to nuclear power plants in European countries. Germany has completely freed itself from Russian energy supplies, others have not. »There are still uranium deliveries from Russia or Rosatom to European nuclear power plants. “Basically, that’s not possible.” This needs to be discussed with these countries now.

According to official information, opposition politician Alexei Navalny died on Friday. He is said to have collapsed in freezing temperatures after a walk in the prison camp where he was serving a three-decade sentence. According to the prison service, attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful. Human rights activists accuse the Russian power apparatus of murder. The prominent anti-corruption campaigner's employees also assume that Navalny was deliberately killed.

The death of the opposition politician, who returned to Russia in 2021 after a poison attack despite the threat of imprisonment, caused consternation in many countries. Many international politicians also spoke of this being a political murder by Putin and the Russian justice system.

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