President Biden met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya on Thursday (Pictures: X/@POTUS)
President Joe Biden met with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s widow and daughter and has vowed new sanctions against Russia.
Biden on Thursday afternoon shared images of himself hugging Navaly’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and sitting in a room between her and Navalny’s daughter, Dasha Navalnaya.
‘Today, I met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya – Aleksey Navalny’s loved ones – to express my condolences for their devastating loss,’ wrote Biden on X (Twitter).
‘Aleksey’s legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha, and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights.’
The White House stated that Biden met with Yulia and Dasha in San Francisco ‘to express his heartfelt condolences for their terrible loss following the death of Aleksey Navalny in a Russian prison’.
Biden ‘expressed his admiration for Aleksey Navalny’s extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone’, the White House stated.
The US president ’emphasized that Aleksey’s legacy will carry on through people across Russia and around the world mourning his loss and fighting for freedom, democracy, and human rights’, continued the White House.
Biden also affirmed that he would announce ‘major new sanctions’ against Russia on Friday in response to Navalny’s death and for the Kremlin’s repression and war on Ukraine.
The meeting was disclosed hours after Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said that his mother was informed of his cause of death.
‘The medical report on death shown to the mother of Alexei Navalny stated that the causes of death were natural,” Yarmysh wrote in Russian on X (Twitter).
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