Wolfgang Pichler, the former head coach of Russian biathletes, left the country long ago and is now successfully preparing the Swedish national team for the upcoming Winter Olympics. At the same time, the specialist admits that he is still worried about “what is happening” in Russia.
In an interview with Metaratings, the mentor said that he equates himself with “ordinary people” who have nothing to do with big politics and therefore “receive only part of the information” about events in the Russian Federation. At the same time, the foreigner “is following the situation with Alexei Navalny and knows that he is now in prison.”
According to Pichler, the politician who harshly criticized the Kremlin should be left at large. “It seems to me that it was a stupid decision of the Russian authorities, because now, in the eyes of the whole world, Russia looks like a country with a dictatorship,” the source said.
These words came after his daughter Daria Navalnaya came to Strasbourg to pick up the European Parliament prize awarded to the oppositionist. The girl called on the MEPs to help her in the “immediate release” of her father from the colony, where he has been serving a real term in the Yves Rocher case since 2021, appointed by the Russian court.
Pichler had earlier condemned the Russian authorities for “the probable substitution of almost all doping tests” at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi and called it “an attack on sports.” The coach is a citizen of Germany, where Alexei Navalny, who fell into a coma after being poisoned in 2020, was transported for treatment.
Source: Rosbalt
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