Alexei Navalny’s daughter urges EU to confront Russia’s Putin as she accepts award on his behalf
- Daria Navalnaya received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize on behalf of her father
- She also called on lawmakers to reject the ‘cynicism’ of pragmatic relations with Moscow
“Although coming here is amazing, it is also probably exactly how mine and my family’s worst nightmare looks like,” Daria Navalnaya told the European Parliament as she picked up its annual Sakharov Prize.
Navalny – Putin’s highest-profile domestic opponent – has been behind bars since returning to Moscow in January from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning attack with a Novichok nerve agent that both he and the West blame on the Kremlin.
“I don’t understand why those who advocate for pragmatic relations with dictators can’t simply open some history books,” Navalnaya, a 20-year-old student at Stanford University in the US, told lawmakers.
“It’s very easy to understand the inescapable political law: the pacification of dictators and tyrants never works.”
Navalnaya attacked European politicians “who dream of getting a job on the board of directors of Putin’s state-owned companies or sailing on an oligarch’s yacht”.