Biden Meets With Alexei Navalny’s Widow and Daughter
SAN FRANCISCO — President Joe Biden met with the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s widow and daughter in California on Thursday, and later said he’d be announcing sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin, “who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.”
The meeting with Yulia Navalnaya and Dasha Navalnaya came as a surprise to reporters covering the president’s West Coast trip, as it wasn’t included in his daily schedule.
The meeting comes less than a week after Navalny, Russia’s highest profile opposition leader, died under mysterious circumstances in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence.
On Thursday, Biden told reporters, “I had the honor of meeting with Alexei Navalny’s wife and daughter and to state the obvious: He was a man of incredible courage and it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that.”
A read-out of the meeting subsequently released by the White House said 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.”
It went on to say the president emphasized that Navalny’s legacy will carry on “through people across Russia and around the world mourning his loss and fighting for freedom, democracy, and human rights.”
The readout also said that the sanctions to be announced on Friday will be “major” and come in response to Navalny’s death as well as “Russia’s repression and aggression, and its brutal and illegal war in Ukraine.”
Biden, who has been in California since Wednesday, was scheduled to participate in a campaign reception in Los Altos Hills before flying back to the White House Thursday evening.
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