Putin's hand was shaken after each murder, encouraging him to kill again – Ukraine's Foreign Minister

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba believes world leaders shaking hands with Putin every time he has killed one of his critics has encouraged him to continue killing.

Source: Kuleba on Twitter

Quote: "[Anna] Politkovskaya, [Alexander] Litvinenko, [Sergei] Magnitsky, [Boris] Nemtsov, [and Alexei] Navalny are only some of the most well-known names on the long list of critics killed by Putin.

There was outrage after each murder, but Putin eventually got away with it, and world leaders shook his hand again. This encouraged him to continue killing people.

Today, some voices continue to call for Putin to be heard and negotiated with. It is time to end the naiveté. Before any meaningful engagement with Moscow can begin, Russia must be defeated in Ukraine and Putin must finally learn a lesson."

Previously: On the afternoon of 16 February, the Federal Penitentiary Service reported the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Correctional Facility No. 3 in Kharp, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in northwestern Siberia.

For reference: Navalny, who had supposedly been trying to expose the Russian authorities and had been arrested more than once, was poisoned in Russia with Novichok. On 20 August 2020, he fainted on a plane, was taken to intensive care, and then fell into a coma. Navalny’s life was saved at the Charité hospital in Germany. On 17 January 2021, after returning to Russia from Germany, Navalny was arrested and charged with failing to fulfil the obligations of a probationer in the Yves Rocher case [he had been accused of embezzling money from a Russian subsidiary of the French cosmetics company – ed.]. And on 2 February 2021, a court in Moscow sentenced Navalny to more than two and a half years’ imprisonment in connection with the Yves Rocher case. On the same day, people took to the streets across Russia. Within hours, the number of detainees exceeded 1,000.

Background: 

• Alexei Navalny has been imprisoned since early 2021. The Moscow City Court sentenced him to 19 years in prison in a special-regime colony for "extremism" in August 2023.

• In December, the opposition leader was transferred to Correctional Facility No. 3, known as Polyarnyi Volk (Polar Wolf), which is located in Kharp in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Siberia.

• Correctional Facility No. 3 "has always served as a penal colony for particularly dangerous recidivists", the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta wrote in 2006. Mikhail Khodarkovsky’s business partner Platon Lebedev served part of his term there.

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