image source, Emil Nikolai Helms/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP
Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony last month, supporters say he was killed by Russian authorities
President Vladimir Putin has always refused to call Russia's main adversaries by name, but now that Alexei Navalny has passed away, he has changed his tune.
“As for Mr. Navalny, it is true that he has passed away. This is always a sad event,” he told reporters after swearing in his fifth term as president.
He also suggested that Navalny had agreed to potentially take part in a prisoner exchange.
Navalny's colleagues say he was killed by Russian authorities in an Arctic prison, citing natural causes.
US President Joe Biden said at the time that it was “further evidence of President Putin's brutality.”
President Putin said on Sunday night that he had been informed by non-administration officials that a planned exchange was taking place in Western countries “for some people” days before Navalny's death. Ta.
He said Navalny immediately agreed on the condition that he never return, adding: “But unfortunately, what happened is what happened.”
Some observers believe the Russian leader's comments are an attempt to distance himself from Navalny's death. Roman Dobrokhotov, an exiled Russian journalist, said it was an attempt to show that “it was a disservice to me and I wanted to replace him.”
But Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny's chief of staff, said the Russian leader's comments showed that “now he has decided there is no need to lie any further.”
Commentators believe that Mr Putin has only used Mr Navalny's name once before, in 2013, when asked why he avoided using his name.
At the time, Navalny insisted he was just one of many opposition leaders, even though he had just finished as runner-up in the Moscow mayoral race.
Independent journalist Farida Rustamova suggested that Russia's longtime leader now feels able to name his enemies because in Navalny's eyes they are no longer a threat. .
In his remarks, Putin compared Navalny's death in prison to deaths in U.S. custody, saying: “Such things have happened more than once.”
Maria Pevchiv, a colleague of the late opposition leader, said she was left speechless by Putin's cynical attitude.
After Navalny's death, it was Pevchiv who said that Navalny was about to be exchanged for a Russian hitman serving a life sentence for murder in Germany.
Vadim Krasikov was sentenced to life in prison for killing a Chechen exile in a Berlin park in 2019. Zelimkhan Khangoshvili fought against Russian forces as a rebel commander in Chechnya years ago and later applied for asylum in Germany.
Pevchiv said two Americans held in Russia were also included in the exchange plan, and that negotiations were finalized the day before Navalny's death on February 16.
image source, Reuters/EPA
Paul Whelan (left) has been in custody since 2018, Ars Kurmasheva (centre) since October last year and Evan Gershkovic since March last year.
The Kremlin has denied that negotiations are underway, but Putin has already raised the possibility of exchanging Vadim Krasikov for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovitch, who spent nearly a year in a Russian prison. It was hinting.
Another American, Paul Whelan, has been detained in Russia for more than five years, and American-Russian journalist Ars Kurmasheva was arrested in October last year.
The Russian leader did not mention Krasikov by name, but instead referred to a man who last month “out of patriotic sentiment eliminated bandits in one of the capitals of Europe”, adding that the killer had not carried out the crime alone. He hinted that it was.
The judge in Krasikov's trial ruled that the killing was ordered by Russian state authorities and that the Berlin government had expelled several Russian diplomats in the wake of the attack.
