US intelligence agencies believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not directly order the death of Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny.
This does not absolve Putin of responsibility, but it deepens the mystery surrounding the death of the dissident who died in a prison camp in February, the Wall Street Journal wrote on Saturday, citing intelligence sources.
Previously, Navalny’s team in exile abroad had alleged, among other things, that Putin had Navalny killed to prevent a planned exchange of the prisoner with Russians imprisoned in the West.
Putin’s guilt is not disputed
The US intelligence report does not dispute Putin’s culpability in Navalny’s death, but says he likely did not order it at the time. This is the view of the CIA, the Office of the U.S. Intelligence Coordinator, and the Intelligence Department of the U.S. Department of State.
Russian opposition figure and close Navalny confidante Leonid Volkov, who was attacked and injured in March while in exile in Lithuania, dismissed the US intelligence assessment as naive. “The idea that Putin was uninformed and did not approve of Navalny’s murder is ridiculous.”
“Reading incessantly”
According to its own statements, the Kremlin considers the newspaper’s report as idle reading intended to entertain the global reading public on Saturday. “I wouldn’t say the material is of high quality,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having anything to do with Navalny’s unexpected death in February 2024.
Nevertheless, Putin stated that he would not have minded replacing Navalny. According to the newspaper report, US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed a prisoner exchange proposal a week before Navalny’s death. Moscow was particularly interested in the release of a Russian imprisoned in Germany for the murder of a Georgian.
Source: Krone
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