Russia Gives Putin Critic Navalny Passport, Won't Let Him Use It
- Navalny thought he could get treatment abroad for damaged eye
- Officials haven’t lifted travel ban, activist’s lawyer says
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who was arrested during a March 26 anti-corruption rally, attends an appeal hearing at a court in Moscow on March 30, 2017.
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny said he’d been issued with a passport that would let him seek treatment abroad for eye damage suffered when an assailant threw a chemical in his face. Russian officials don’t see it that way.
The Federal Migration Service phoned to say he could collect his passport, Navalny wrote on his website Thursday, five years after he was barred from leaving Russia on embezzlement charges for which he was later convicted. Calling the decision a “truce for medical matters,” he said it meant he “can travel for examination and treatment” to a specialist clinic after the attack left him with only 15 percent vision in his right eye.