Alexei Navalny was one of Putin’s biggest opponents for nearly ten years from 2011, and then fell into a coma in 2020 after a suspected poisoning. He returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was immediately arrested and sentenced to 9 years in prison for fraud and contempt of court, but was also accused of inciting terrorism and rehabilitating Nazism. In August 2023, he was sentenced to another 19 years in prison, found guilty of founding and financing an extremist organization.
As previously reported by Index, Navalny – who was in prison from 2021 – died in February at the age of 47 in Russia’s No. 3 penal camp. According to the statement of the penitentiary institution, “A. Convict Navalny fell ill after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness”. The institute’s medical staff arrived at the scene and called an emergency medical team. As they wrote, “all necessary resuscitation procedures were performed, but they did not lead to results.” The doctors providing emergency care confirmed the convict’s death, the statement concluded.
According to the first reports, a blood clot may have caused the tragedy, but many suspected that the politician’s death was not an accident, most of the Western world clearly blamed the president of Russia for the death of the opposition politician.
Vladimir Putin previously said: life is like this, there is nothing to do
The Kremlin has previously reiterated the position of Russian prison authorities that Navalny “felt ill” just before his death after going outside at the Siberian penal facility and collapsing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in March, at a press conference held after the three-day presidential election, that shortly before Navalny’s death, he had agreed to exchange the convict for Russians in Western prisons. He said his only condition was that Navalny not return to Russia after the exchange.
Regarding the politician’s death, he noted that “such is life, nothing can be done”. It was the first time in eleven years that the Russian president uttered the name of Alexei Navalny.
Yulia Navalnaya, the opposition politician’s widow, was attending a security conference in Munich – where she met with European and American leaders such as US Vice President Kamara Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken – when news of her husband’s death emerged. Navalnaya’s goal at the conference was to draw attention to her husband’s case and Russia’s actions against dissidents. His first reaction was to say he didn’t know if he could believe the news, but “no one can trust Vladimir Putin’s government because they keep lying. But if it is true that my husband is dead, then they will be brought to justice and that day will come soon”.
Suspicious events surrounded the politician’s death
Several officials from Russia’s secret service, the FSB, reportedly visited the camp just two days before Navalny was pronounced dead at the barren “Polarny Volk” prison in Harp, high in the Arctic Circle. The authorities turned off and dismantled some of the security cameras and listening devices there.
the visit was not the only suspicious event, Alexey Navalny was apparently fine a day before his death, and this was confirmed by his mother.
In addition, the speed with which the authorities announced and commented on the tragedy in the remote camp was also shocking. This could indicate that Navalny died much earlier than the Kremlin claimed.
Barely two minutes after the official news of the 47-year-old man’s death, the prison authorities published a press release that seemed to have been prepared for a long time. Four minutes later, a state-controlled channel on Telegram claimed the cause of death was a blood clot. And just seven minutes later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke to the first media about it. In other words, the news of the death traveled the world with extraordinary speed, spread by the Kremlin.
After the death of the opposition leader in Russia, crowds marched to the memorials of the victims of political repression. They wished their pardon with a bunch of flowers, but it seemed that the Kremlin did not take kindly to the meetings, more than 400 people were detained at the commemorations.
The intelligence agencies of the United States of America have now taken a stand
U.S. intelligence agencies evaluated the various information available, including the results of classified intelligence and analysis of public facts such as the date of Navalny’s death and how his death overshadowed Putin’s March “elections.”
US intelligence agencies have concluded that Vladimir Putin probably did not give the order to kill Navalny in a Russian prison.
Sources in The Wall Street Journal say that this position is “widely accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department’s intelligence unit.”
It should be noted, however, that
Even so, US officials did not absolve Vladimir Putin of overall responsibility for Navalny’s death,
given that the opposition politician was a target of the Russian government for many years, he was imprisoned on politically motivated charges and poisoned in 2020. So it remains an open question as to who bears the responsibility for Navalny’s death.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Saturday he had seen The Wall Street Journal’s report, which he said contained “empty speculation.” “I saw the material, I wouldn’t say it’s a high-quality material that deserves attention,” the Kremlin spokesman told reporters, according to Ukraine Pravda. Navalny’s longtime ally and deputy, Leonid Volkov, called the US conclusions naive and ridiculous. He previously said: “Putin killed Alexei Navalny. And now she decided she didn’t have to pretend anymore. He confirmed it himself.”
The tragedy also provoked strong reactions in Hungary
The news of the politician’s death shook public opinion all over the world, Hungarian opposition politicians also reacted one by one, according to which Russian President Vladimir Putin is clearly responsible for what happened. Among others, Ferenc Gyurcsány, Anna Donáth, András Fekete-Győr, Katalin Cseh, Ákos Hadházy and Péter Márki-Zay also spoke.
In February, on the first day of the spring session of the Parliament, the ruling party representatives did not stand up, when the dialogic Bence Tordai, in his speech before the agenda, asked his fellow representatives to stand up and pay tribute to the memory of the Russian opposition leader with a minute of silence. After the representatives of the ruling party and Speaker of the House László Kövér remained seated, Tordai stated that it is a shame that Fidesz is in the pay of Vladimir Putin. In his reply, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán thanked the ruling party representatives for showing restraint in the Navalny case.
Chauvinists deserve no respect. And we will not stand up in honor of whoever called the Georgians rats in the Georgian-Russian war. Anyway, rest in peace
– Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, stated regarding the death of Alexei Navalny.
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2024-04-28 01:18:55