Are US intelligence agencies “naive”?
Report: Putin did not order Navalny’s death
April 27, 2024, 1:16 p.m
To this day it is not clear why Russian Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny died. The conclusion of the US secret services is that it was not an assassination attempt on behalf of Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin critic’s colleagues call the findings “ridiculous.”
US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not order the killing of Alexei Navalny – at least not in February, when the Russian opposition leader died in an Arctic prison camp at the age of 47. The reported the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing people familiar with the intelligence agency’s investigation.
Accordingly, the US secret services do not deny that Putin is ultimately responsible for Navalny’s death. According to the report, however, they question whether the Kremlin leader was directly involved in the events of February 16th. The finding is accepted within the US intelligence services and shared by authorities such as the CIA, writes the WSJ.
As a result, some European secret services were also informed about the findings of their US colleagues. According to the report, however, they are said to be skeptical that Navalny could come to harm in a system as strictly controlled as Putin’s without the ruler’s prior knowledge. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and other opposition figures also accuse the Russian head of state of ordering the assassination. The Kremlin denies this accusation.
Lots of contradictions
Kremlin critic Navalny, who was sentenced to a long prison sentence, died in a prison camp in Siberia in mid-February. The circumstances of his death are still unclear to this day. Russian authorities say Putin’s harshest critic collapsed without warning while touring the icy prison yard. It is said that Navalny felt unwell. Attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful.
Just the day before, however, the Kremlin critic seemed to be doing well – considering the circumstances. In a recording that shows Navalny in his cell, the opposition leader jokingly and laughingly asks a judge for a money transfer.
After his death, further contradictions became known: Among other things, officials from the Russian secret service FSB visited the prison camp just two days before Navalny collapsed. It also took the Federal Penitentiary Service just two minutes to inform the Russian public about the incident in a press release. The Russian authorities then refused to hand over the Kremlin critic’s body to his mother for more than a week.
“Ridiculous”
Leonid Volkov, a long-time confidant and comrade of Navalny, remains convinced that Putin ordered the death of his harshest critic. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, he rejected the US intelligence community’s assessment as “naive”: Those who claim that Putin knew nothing “obviously understand nothing about how modern Russia works,” says Volkov . “The idea that Putin was uninformed and did not approve of Navalny’s murder is ridiculous.”
Shortly after Navalny’s death, his colleagues had already made public the Kremlin’s possible motive for the attack. Accordingly, the opposition leader should be released as part of a prisoner exchange for the Tiergarten murderer imprisoned in Germany. It was said that a corresponding offer was made to Kremlin boss Putin at the beginning of February.
A few weeks later, Putin confirmed that a prisoner exchange was indeed planned. The proposal was made to him to release Navalny as part of a prisoner exchange, Putin said at a press conference in March. He has already given his consent to the exchange for Russians imprisoned in the West – on the condition that the opposition politician leaves Russia and does not return.