Putin accuses West of using Navalny to ‘contain’ Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday accused the West of using jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny to try to "contain" Russia. "Our opponents or our potential opponents... have always relied on -- and used -- ambitious, power-hungry people," Putin said in an interview with Russian media. Putin suggested that the wave of protests recently held across Russia in the wake of Navalny's arrest and imprisonment had also been fed from abroad, against the backdrop of the widespread "exhaustion, frustration and dissatisfaction" arising from the coronavirus pandemic. Navalny, a persistent thorn in Putin's side, was arrested on his return from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning he claims was carried out by the Kremlin and the Russian security services, FSB.
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