5. The Assembly considers that the Russian State bears full responsibility for the killing of Alexei Navalny,who was subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of the judgments and interimmeasures of the European Court of Human Rights, and who had moreover survived an assassination attemptwith a chemical weapon, perpetrated in 2020 by a squad of FSB (the Russian Federation’s Federal SecurityService) assassins.

6. Mr Navalny has become the latest critic of Vladimir Putin to die at the hands of, or with at the least thetacit approval of, the Russian apparatus of oppression. For the past two decades, individuals who haveopposed Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on the Russian Federation have been killed, usually with the involvement ofthe Russian secret services or persons acting at their behest. The list of the regime’s victims includes, amongothers, journalists Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estemirova, Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova;Sergei Magnitsky – a lawyer murdered for exposing large scale corruption among the highest echelons of theRussian Government; Alexander Litvinenko – a former FSB officer who defected to the United Kingdom; andBoris Nemtsov – a deputy Prime Minister who challenged Vladimir Putin’s rule and whose circumstances ofdeath remain unclear, as noted by the Assembly in its Resolution 2297 (2019). Hundreds more innocenthuman rights defenders and opposition figures remain imprisoned on trumped-up charges and can beconsidered political prisoners as defined by Resolution 1900 (2012), including Vladimir Kara-Murza, IlyaYashin and Oleg Orlov. An independent journalist who covered the trial of Mr Navalny and recorded his finalcourt appearance on 15 February 2024, Antonina Favorskaya, was arbitrarily detained on charges of“extremism” and faces a lengthy prison sentence. The human rights organisation OVD-Info reports that thereare now over 1 000 political prisoners in the Russian Federation.

7. The Assembly deplores that acts of torture such as those to which Mr Navalny was exposed aresystemically applied against political prisoners in the Russian Federation, Ukrainian political prisoners illegallydetained in Russian prisons since 2014 and Ukrainian prisoners of war, as stated in its Resolution 2528(2024). According to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the majority ofUkrainians in Russian captivity have been subjected to torture, rape, threats of sexual violence, deprivation offood and sleep and other forms of ill-treatment.

8. The Assembly recalls that the obligation to take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or othermeasures to prevent acts of torture, as enshrined in Article 2(1) of the Convention against Torture and OtherCruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is unconditional and that no exceptionalcircumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any otherpublic emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

9. Some of the persons directly responsible for and participating in the persecution and torture of AlexeiNavalny are well known. A detailed list can be found via this link: “Navalny list”. It includes prison staff, policeofficers, prosecutors and judges involved in their respective roles in the gross abuse of the Russian justicesystem for the purpose of punishing Mr Navalny for his political activism and creating a chilling effect withinRussian society.

10. On 13 October 2023 and in the following days, an open attack on Alexei Navalny's lawyers began:Alexei Lipster, Vadim Kobzev and Igor Sergunin were detained on remand in Moscow. Olga Mikhailova(senior lawyer of Alexei Navalny) and Alexander Fedulov, who were abroad at the time, were subject to anarrest warrant. Criminal cases on trumped-up charges have been initiated against them and some of theiroffices were searched, in manifest breach of legal professional privilege, establishing an even more hostileenvironment for providing an effective legal defence in the Russian Federation.

11. The persons on this list should be included in the sanctions lists naming individuals, which are or maybe established under existing and future Magnitsky-type sanctions laws.

12. Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russian Federation has become a de facto dictatorship. Not only has itstifled democratic opposition inside the Russian Federation: it has also failed to respect the democraticchoices of neighbouring States and their political independence. By invading Georgia in 2008, unlawfullyannexing the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the City of Sevastopol, and violently occupying parts of theDonetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in 2014, interfering in foreign electoral processes and, finally, by launching itsfull-scale war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 and threatening those assisting Ukraine’s self-defence with nuclear war, the regime of Vladimir Putin has fully committed to war on democracy. By doing so,it seeks to re-establish the former Soviet sphere of influence and take revenge on States which rejected itstotalitarianism in favour of democracy and human rights.

13. Vladimir Putin’s regime has committed to the neo-imperialistic ideology of Russkiy Mir (the “Russianworld”), which the Kremlin has turned into a tool for promoting war. This ideology is being used to destroy theremnants of democracy, to militarise Russian society and to justify external aggression to expand the Russian

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