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On the front page of the press, Monday February 19: the repression, in Russia, of citizens wanting to pay tribute to Alexeï Navalny, the opponent of Vladimir Putin, who died in detention on Friday. According to
Novaya Gazeta
, which cites the NGO OVD-Info, more than 360 people have already been arrested – including nearly 200 in Saint Petersburg alone. The Russian opposition newspaper reports that courts began handing out prison sentences and fines on Saturday, but that "despite this, people continue to bring flowers" in memory of Alexei Navalny.
Three days after the official announcement of his death, his disappearance continues to provoke reactions across the planet. In an interview with the Belarusian newspaper
Nacha Niva
, relayed by the Russian-speaking news site
Meduza
, Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievitch said she feared that the death of Alexei Navalny would open "an abyss of permissiveness for dictators around the world " – including in her own country, Belarus, where nearly 2,000 opponents are currently languishing in prison, according to her. But Svetlana Alexievitch says she hopes that after the “assassination” of Navalny, “the world will (finally) understand that Putin, like Hitler, is capable of dragging the world into a world war.”
“Death of Navalny in a former gulag in the Arctic: Putin reassures”
✏️ The drawing by @cocoboer pic.twitter.com/8E8YQzBI6E
— Libération (@libe) February 19, 2024
In a column published by the Italian newspaper
La Repubblica
, Vera Politkovskaïa, the daughter of journalist Anna Politkovskaïa, murdered in Moscow in October 2006, denounces the "torture" suffered by Alexeï Navalny in detention, expresses her doubts on the fact that the circumstances The exact details of his death will be known one day, but also his bitterness in the face of the indignant declarations of Westerners: "This is not the first time that I have heard similar words. After the death of my mother Anna Politkovskaya and after the death of Boris Nemtsov, the scenario was the same. Today I can say with certainty that (these) statements mean nothing to European and American politicians, (and that) the assassination of Navalny is just a another pretext to 'slap' Putin's Russia." And to continue: “We must accept that the name (of Alexeï Navalny) will only lengthen the list of those who tried to fight against the Putin regime and who lost.”
Lots of reactions, too, from press cartoonists. The designer Coco, whose drawing is published by
Libération
, shares doubts about the possibility of one day seeing the truth emerge about the death of Alexeï Navalny, in a former gulag in the Arctic. “Putin reassures,” says the caption: “Our experts (penguins, in this case) will shed light on this matter.”
The Russian president, found in David Rowe's drawing, published on
X
, on the edge of a bathtub filled with the blood of his opponents. "Navalny? Navalny who?" he pretends to ask. In a corner of the image, "Novichok bath salts", an allusion to the opponent's first assassination attempt, in 2020. Or even Putin watching from a Kremlin window the arrest of citizens wanting to surrender tribute to Alexei Navalny. “What are you still so afraid of?”, they ask him, in Peter Schrank’s cartoon for
The Times
.
one drop. @FinancialReview pic.twitter.com/GBN72jsyfb
— david rowe (@roweafr) February 18, 2024
Vladimir Putin, who hailed an “important victory” for Russia, after the capture of the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka. In Nicola Jennings' cartoon for
The Guardian
, the Russian president enters the city reduced to a pile of ruins after four months of siege, parading on the back of the Republican elephant - an allusion to the blocking of American aid by Congress . The German daily
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
notes, for its part, that "the bad news is piling up" for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also faced with the lack of ammunition and the desire of many young people to leave Ukraine so as not to be sent on the forehead. “The Ukrainian army now lacks everything: functional artillery pieces, 125 mm shells, drones, planes and, increasingly, men to fight,” confirms the Swiss newspaper Le
Temps
, evoking an objective now reduced, for Kiev, to “saving its soldiers”.
A word also about the deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, where at least 64 people died on Sunday in tribal violence. “The toll of what appears to have been an ambush linked to a persistent conflict between two tribes could rise further,” according to the authorities quoted on
France 24
, which indicates that “tribal clashes, often triggered by territorial conflicts and accusations Theft has been occurring for centuries in the Highlands region, the part of the country some 600 km northwest of the capital Port Moresby – where "the influx of automatic weapons has made fighting even more deadly and intensified the violence.
We won't leave each other on this. Before saying see you tomorrow, I wanted to share with you the front page of
Libération
, which is concerned about the increasingly frequent exclusion of children from public spaces, particularly in certain establishments or airlines, which now reserve their access to adults. “How far” will this go?, asks Libé, with a front page that twists the title of a cartoon, “Despicable Me”, into “Me, bratty and embarrassing”.
🗞️ “Me, brat and embarrassing”: it’s the front page of Monday’s newspaper
Read: https://t.co/nj2k4mQp7h pic.twitter.com/yPjBqfmQT1
— Libération (@libe) February 18, 2024
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