Czech president: Russia should allow Alexei Navaly to stand for election

Russia should let opposition leader Alexei Navalny stand in elections, Czech President Miloš Zeman said in an interview for the daily Mladá fronta Dnes published on Thursday. Navalny was jailed after returning from Berlin, where he was recovering from a poisoning he blames on President Vladimir Putin and his secret services.

Zeman – among the most supportive of the Kremlin of all EU heads of state or government – said there is no reason to make Navalny a martyr, and that his jailing amounts to censuring a political candidate. He also described blocking former US President Donald Trump’s social media accounts as censorship.