The President of the European Parliament David Sassoli presented the Sakharov Prize «For Freedom of Thought» to Daria Navalny, the daughter of blogger Alexei Navalny, who is in prison. She received the award instead of her father.
The 2021 awards ceremony took place in Strasbourg. On October 20, it became known that Alexei Navalny would receive the prize for "a long-term struggle for human rights and freedoms, for courage in attempts to revive freedom of choice for Russians."
The award ceremony was also attended by a colleague of Alexei Navalny, Leonid Volkov, who escaped from Russia after the initiation of a criminal case against him. Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov previously said that the European Parliament, making such decisions, "devalues the name of the award."
Alexey Navalny is serving a sentence in the Yves Rocher case, which was initiated at the request of the head of the company's representative office in Russia, Bruno Lepru. The Investigative Committee found that Alexei Navalny, together with his brother Oleg, stole 30 million rubles, most of which was stolen from Yves Rocher, the rest from the Interregional Processing Company. "
Alexei Navalny was put in the colony after he repeatedly violated the conditions of the probationary period, for which he was put on the wanted list.