Since February 16, when Alexei Navalny died while serving a sentence in a prison in the Russian Arctic, his allies, human rights groups, foreign governments and even the UN (United Nations) have attributed what happened to the Russian government. . According to a report from The Wall Street JournalHowever, it is unlikely that President Vladimir Putin ordered the death of his main political rival.
The finding that the Russian leader was not the one who ordered the crime came from US intelligence, a position corroborated by agencies from other countries. Although they do not completely remove responsibility from Putin, US spy agencies understand that the Russian president did not directly order Navalny’s death at that time.
Among the entities that agree with the assessment, the newspaper highlights the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department’s intelligence unit.
To reach this conclusion, US intelligence considered a series of factors, including secret information and other information in the public domain. He assessed, for example, that the timing of Navalny’s death was detrimental to Putin, who had his re-election as president overshadowed.
Another controversial point was revealed days after the death by journalist Maria Pevchikh, an ally of Navalny. According to her, Russian authorities were close to carrying out an exchange involving the late opposition leader and two US citizens. Prisoner exchange negotiations were in the final stages on the night of February 15, the day before the death.
The position, however, is not accepted by Navalny’s allies. Leonid Volkov, a former adviser to Putin’s rival, said those who claim the Russian president’s innocence “clearly don’t understand anything about how modern Russia works.” According to him, “the idea of Putin not being informed and not approving Navalny’s murder is ridiculous.”
By discarding Putin, US intelligence even contradicts President Joe Biden, who openly accused his counterpart. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” said the US president shortly after his death, according to the newspaper The New York Times. “What happened to Navalny is even more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be deceived.”
In Washington, the same people who dispute the fact that Putin was the mastermind admit that they do not have an explanation for Navalny’s death and say that the circumstances may never be clarified.
Who was Alexei Navalny
The most prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny rose to prominence by organizing demonstrations and running for public office in Russia. His network had 50 regional offices and reported cases of corruption involving the government, which led the Kremlin to take legal action to ban the opposition, who then began to be persecuted.
In August 2020, during a trip to Siberia, Navalny was poisoned and spent months recovering in Berlin. He returned to Moscow on January 17, 2021 and was detained at the airport. A month later, he was tried and convicted of violating a suspended sentence from a 2014 fraud case. Prosecutors alleged that he did not report himself to the police precisely when he was in a coma from the toxic dose.
Incarcerated in a high-security penal colony, he went on a hunger strike to protest the lack of medical care. Then, in June 2021, a Russian court banned the regional offices and its Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) from operating, classifying them as “extremist”. Tried and convicted, the oppositionist never regained his freedom and maintained contact with his followers through social media, updated by allies.
The government’s last retaliatory measure against Navalny was to transfer him to the freezing IK-3 penal colony in the Russian Arctic, where he died on February 16, 2024. Putin’s number one enemy fainted while walking in the courtyard, and the Attempts to resuscitate him, according to prison officials, were in vain.
Navalny was serving a 30-year sentence on various charges, ranging from fraud to extremism, the latter being the most serious. He always claimed that the accusations were politically motivated and often complained about the treatment he received in prison, even saying that his health was poor as a result.
The persecution of which he was a victim led allies, human rights groups, foreign governments and even the UN (United Nations) to blame the Russian government for his death, some using the word “murder”.
After his death, the debate about his return to Russia resumed, even though he knew he would be arrested and possibly killed by the regime. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said Navalny could not opt for a quiet life in exile because he “deeply loved” Russia and believed in the potential of the Russian people for a better future. She further alleged that her husband not only expressed these convictions, but lived them intensely, even being willing to sacrifice his life for them.
