(DailyDig.com) – Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, most likely did not order Alexei Navalny’s death in February 2024, according to a senior official of a US intelligence agency. Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence in a remote prison in Russia, and he was one of Russia’s most infamous political dissidents. He was also the leader of the opposition against Putin.
His prison sentence began in 2021, when he returned from Germany. He had been in Germany to recover from being poisoned by Novichok, a nerve agent used by the military. He and other Western intelligence officials believe that his opposition in Russia, specifically Putin, caused the poisoning.
Upon hearing of Navalny’s death, US intelligence officials and leaders of foreign countries blamed Putin for ordering the assassination of his political rival. Even with this new assessment that Putin did not give the order for Navalny’s death, they all expressed that he was involved, even though there is no “smoking gun” proof.
Following his death, President Biden stated that the US was unaware of what happened regarding the death, but that Putin was responsible, even though Biden did not accuse him directly. Biden added that he does not doubt that Putin’s people did something that eventually caused his death.
Unnamed sources said that just placing Navalny in the highly secured penal colony in a remote area north of the Arctic Circle was, in itself, a death sentence. According to a statement from the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, Navalny had taken a walk on the day of his death and felt ill after returning.
His death, according to Russian officials, was due to natural causes. They rejected the claims made by any intelligence agency that they were involved in his death or even in the 2020 Novichok poisoning.
One month following Navalny’s death, President Putin won his reelection campaign for his fifth term in a landslide.
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