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PARIS – France will hold Russian President Vladimir Putin responsible if imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny dies in custody, according to French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
“We will impose the necessary sanctions, and we will hold mister Putin and Russian authorities responsible [if Navalny dies in prison],” Le Drian said on public broadcaster France 2 Thursday morning. “I hope we won’t get there.”
Le Drian nevertheless said France and Russia “must continue talking to each other, [Putin] is our neighbor, he is quite cumbersome but he is here.”
The French foreign minister also said he doesn’t believe Russia intends to carry out a military assault against Ukraine through its current buildup of around 100,000 Russian forces at the border but he said “the fact of massing so many troops at the border with Donbass presents risks of accidents or incidents and so of conflictuality.”
Le Drian also outlined three ways in which he thinks Putin has grown more autocratic.
“There’s an internal authoritarian drift, the targeting of Navalny is insufferable … an external provocation and intimidation drift, with what is happening in Ukraine … and attempts at interference by trying to attack our democratic institutions. We saw what happened in the Czech Republic, this is all very worrying and we must be very firm,” Le Drian said.
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