Western allies issue joint statement on second anniversary of Navalny’s death, renew call for accountability
Fifteen countries marked the second anniversary of Alexei Navalny’s death with a coordinated statement blaming Russian authorities, urging a transparent investigation and calling for the release of political prisoners.
COPENHAGEN, February 16, 2026 — A group of 15 Western countries issued a joint statement on Sunday to mark the second anniversary of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, saying Russian authorities remain solely responsible and renewing calls for a thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. The statement was published by Denmark’s Foreign Ministry.
The signatories — Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom — said Russia’s human rights situation had deteriorated sharply before and since Navalny’s death in a penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024. They said the Kremlin had expanded its use of repressive tactics and national security laws against human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and doctors.
The statement cited a Feb. 3 judgment by the European Court of Human Rights that found Russia responsible for inhuman and degrading treatment of Navalny in detention and for failing to respond adequately to his requests. It also pointed to recent findings published by the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands in support of demands for greater accountability.
The countries said more than 1,700 people are currently detained in Russia on political grounds, citing independent monitor OVD-Info, and said many political prisoners face torture, denial of medical treatment and forced psychiatric detention. They linked repression inside Russia to Moscow’s war in Ukraine and called on Russian authorities to comply with their international obligations and release all political prisoners.
The statement is not, by itself, a new sanctions action. But it adds coordinated diplomatic pressure from a bloc of countries that have repeatedly paired human rights criticism of Moscow with sanctions and other restrictive measures since Navalny’s death and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.