In Germany, Alexei and Yulia Navalny were awarded the “Prize for Media Freedom”

Alexey and Yulia Navalny have been nominated for the German “Media Freedom Award”.

The award will be presented at the annual Ludwig Erhard Summit, which will take place April 17–19 at Lake Tegernsee.

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny (posthumously) and his widow will receive an award for “the courage shown in the resistance movement” and for “the courageous and non-violent struggle against the brutal dictatorship in Russia.” The justification for the nomination says: “They are the faces of a better, new, free and democratic Russia. They are heroes of resistance of our time who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the betterment of our world.”

The award will be accepted by Yulia Navalnaya personally on behalf of herself and her late husband. The ceremonial speech during the award ceremony will be made by the Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), Friedrich Merz.

The organizer of the annual political and economic summit is the Weimer Media Group (WMG). The Media Freedom Prize was founded by the group’s publishers, Christiane Goetz-Weimer and Wolfram Weimer. The award is given to public figures who have performed exceptionally well in the fight for freedom of opinion, political dialogue and democracy.

In 2023, the prize winner was Garry Kasparov. Previously, Vladimir Zelensky and Mikhail Gorbachev were awarded it.

Along with the presentation of the prize, one of the important events of the summit every year is the discussion “arena” of the leaders of political parties in Germany.

This year, representatives of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany, the Left Party and the newly formed Sarah Wagenknecht Union are deliberately not invited to the event. The summit organizers stressed that they do not provide a stage for extremists, enemies of democracy and opponents of the European Union. “The Ludwig Erhard Summit is an open, broad-based platform,” emphasized Christiane Goetz-Weimer and Wolfram Weimer on the eve of the summit.

• Alexey Navalny, according to Russian authorities, died in the Polar Wolf colony in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug on February 16. The conclusion about his death states that the politician died of natural causes. Navalny’s supporters believe he was killed. During his imprisonment, he spent more than 300 days in a punishment cell.