More than 130 internationally recognized writers, artists, and scholars, including six Nobel laureates, have urged the Russian authorities to immediately release opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, emphasizing that he needs "urgent and immediate independent medical help."
Among the signatories to the open letter made public on April 28 are prominent Russian-American dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, writer J.K. Rowling, Nobel literature laureates Orhan Pamuk, Herta Muller, Olga Tokarczuk, Svetlana Alexievich, Mario Vargas Llosa, and J.M. Coetzee, as well as cartoonist Art Spiegelman, playwright Tom Stoppard, actor Jean Reno, former soccer player Eric Cantona, film director and composer Jeffrey Jacob Abrams, and many others.
"We add our voices to those of the 600 Russian doctors requesting urgent and immediate independent medical help. A further 100 Russian lawyers and 100 regional deputies are demanding that the torture of Navalny cease and again that medical assistance be provided," the open letter says.
"Navalny is serving prison sentences based on charges which would never have been upheld under any independent legal system. We support the call of the German government, the U.S. authorities, and the European Union demanding his immediate release. It is in your power."
Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision making has rarely been influenced by such foreign public pressure during his more than two decades in power.
The letter was published two days after Navalny said a new probe had been launched against him, this time on a charge of terrorism, and that he will be tried on the "absurd" charge by a military court.
Navalny said another case on a charge of propagating terrorism and Nazism was launched against him in October over his self-exiled associates' statements on the Popular Politics YouTube channel. They criticized Putin and his government and condemned Moscow’s ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed earlier this month that Navalny's associates, along with Ukraine's secret services, were involved in the assassination of pro-Kremlin journalist and propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg in early April. The FSB did not provide any evidence linking Navalny's associates. His team has rejected the FSB claims.
The outspoken Kremlin critic has been in prison since February 2021, after he was arrested the month before upon returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been undergoing treatment for a near-fatal poisoning with a Novichok-type nerve agent that he says was ordered by Putin.
The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny's poisoning, even though only state actors have access to the military-grade nerve agent.
Several other opposition leaders and Navalny's associates have been charged with establishing an extremist group. Many of Navalny's close associates fled Russia under pressure from the authorities.