Alexei Navalny died shortly before he was due to be released in a prisoner swap. This is what Maria Pevchich, the chairman of his anti-corruption foundation, said in a message on YouTube. According to her, the Russian opposition leader would be swapped with Vadim Krasikov, the Russian hitman serving a life sentence for murder in Germany. The deal would also involve two Americans currently being held in Russia.
Source: BELGA
Yesterday at 2:11 PM
Negotiations had been going on for two years. On February 15, they were in the final phase, it was said on Monday. But the next day, Navalny died in a prison camp in Siberia. According to Pevchich, American and German authorities were also involved in the negotiations. The German government declined to comment on Monday.
Navalny’s allies accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind the opposition leader’s death. Maria Pevchich suspects that Putin changed his mind at the last minute. He realized that the West was willing to let the Russian assassin go in exchange for Navalny, so he decided “to make the object of the exchange disappear. That is the absolutely illogical, irrational behavior of a crazy mafioso,” Pevchich said.
Vadim Krasikov murdered an exiled Chechen rebel leader in a Berlin park in 2019. It was always suspected that he committed the murder on the orders of the Russian authorities. Putin recently confirmed in the interview with American presenter Tucker Carlson that he was negotiating a prisoner exchange.
