Press
The list of oddities surrounding Navalny's death is long. But US secret services apparently do not believe that Putin ordered the murder. A confidant of the Kremlin critic finds this “ridiculous.”
New York City – As the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny died in a Siberian prison camp on February 16, attention quickly turned to Moscow. But according to US intelligence information, the Russian president ordered Wladimir Putin The death of the opposition figure probably did not occur at this point, as stated in a report by the Wall Street Journal from Saturday (April 27th). The Kremlin commented on the presentation as meaningless reading to keep the global reading public entertained on Saturday.
The mystery surrounding Navalny's death deepens: US secret services apparently do not think Putin is directly involved
Navalny has been serving a 19-year prison sentence in Russia since 2021. The opposition activist had been imprisoned in the notorious penal camp in the Siberian permafrost since the end of last year: The “Polar Wolf” penal colony in the Yamal-Nenets region is considered one of the toughest prisons in Russia. The Kremlin critic had complained about harassment, torture and a lack of medical help. The repeated solitary confinement orders had also taken its toll on him. The death of the opposition activist in prison underlines “[…] “just the weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin built,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented in February. “Russia is responsible,” Blinken continued.
Numerous other Western politicians also blamed the Kremlin for the death of the Kremlin opponent. However, US secret services assume that Putin did not directly order Navalny's death. The reported that Wall Street Journal (behind paywall) citing US intelligence sources. This does not relieve the Kremlin chief of his responsibility, but it deepens the mystery surrounding the death of the dissident who died in a prison camp in February, the report continued. The CIA, the Office of the US Intelligence Coordinator and the Intelligence Department of the US State Department are of this opinion. Some European intelligence services had been informed about the US assessment, it said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented WSJ– Report with the words: “I would not say that it is high quality material.” According to official information from Moscow, Navalny is said to have collapsed while walking around the prison yard. His death certificate states that he died from “natural causes”. Navalny's relatives and supporters, however, speak of murder; the Kremlin has rejected these accusations.
What evidence speaks against Putin's direct involvement?
US intelligence agencies therefore assume that Putin did not plan Navalny's death, at least not at this point. In addition to US intelligence information, the newspaper's report also uses publicly known facts. One indication that speaks against a contract killing is the timing: around a month later, the presidential elections took place in Russia, which were overshadowed by the incident.
In addition, Putin had shown himself open to a prisoner exchange before Navalny's death. The opposition should be against those imprisoned in Germany Russian “Tiergarten Murderer”.. According to the report of Wall Street Journals would have been US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) spoke about the exchange just a week before his death.
Navalny confidant finds US intelligence assessments “ridiculous”
Navalny was already a victim of one in 2020 assassination attempt with the nerve agent Novichok, suspicion fell on the Russian secret service at the time. Leonid Volkov, a confidant of Navalny, has now rejected this WSJ reported US intelligence agencies' assessment of Navalny's death as naive. “The idea that Putin was uninformed and did not approve of Navalny’s killing is ridiculous.”
The list of oddities surrounding the death of the Kremlin critic is long. To name just a few: Just two days before his death in the prison camp, officials from the Russian secret service FSB visited the prison camp, like the human rights organization Gulagu.net reported. A few days after the death, Putin promoted prison officials.
In addition, the Russian authorities refused to hand over Navalny's body to his mother for more than a week. The relatives saw this as an attempt to conceal involvement in Navalny's death. In a video released the day before his death, Navalny was seen in fairly good physical shape, AFP reported. The timing was precisely a message from Putin, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili believes this. “I think it was no coincidence that Navalny’s death was announced a few hours or minutes before the start of the Munich conference,” the politician told the German Press Agency. It was a message for the conference (bme with dpa/AFP).
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