Navalny aide says the opposition leader was close to being freed before his death

ASSOCIATES OF Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Monday that talks were under way shortly before his death to exchange him for a Russian imprisoned in Germany.

“Alexei Navalny could have been sitting here now, today. It’s not a figure of speech,” Maria Pevchikh, a close associate who lives outside Russia, said in a video statement posted on social media. She said she received confirmation the talks were in the “final stages” on February 15, the day before Navalny was reported dead.

Her claims could not be independently confirmed and she did not offer any evidence to back them up.

According to Pevchikh, Navalny and two US citizens held in Russia were supposed to be swapped for Vadim Krasikov. He was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing in Berlin of Z eli mk han‘ Tor nike’ Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen descent. German judges said Krasikov acted on the orders of Russian authorities, who gave him a false identity, passport and resources to carry out the killing.

She didn’t identify the US citizens that were supposedly part of the deal. There are several in custody in Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, convicted of espionage and serving a long prison sentence. They and the US government dispute the charges against them.

German officials have refused to comment when asked if there had been any effort by Russia to secure a swap of Krasikov.

U.S. commentator Tucker Carlson earlier this month asked President Vladimir Putin about the prospects of exchanging Gershkovich, and Putin said the Kremlin was open to negotiations. He pointed to a man imprisoned in a “US-allied country” for “liquidating a bandit” who had allegedly killed Russian soldiers during separatist fighting in Chechnya. Putin didn’t mention names but appeared to refer to Krasikov.

Pevchikh alleged in her video, without offering evidence, that Putin “wouldn’t tolerate” setting Navalny free and decided to “get rid of the bargaining chip”.

Asked at a regular news conference in Berlin about the claim by the Navalny team, German government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said she couldn’t comment.

Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center said on Telegram that Putin, “fundamentally, always makes exchanges according to the one-for-one formula” and may have been ready to swap “Krasikov for journalist Evan Gershkovich”.

A Western government official with knowledge of the situation, who insisted on anonymity, said no offer involving Navalny and US citizens was made.

Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins’School of Advanced International Studies, said he was sceptical that Putin would agree to exchange Navalny and then “murder him at the last moment to avoid this exchange”.

Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician, died on February 16 in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.

AP Women lay flowers to pay tribute to Alexei Navalny at the monument, a large boulder from the Solovetsky islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established, near the historical Federal Security Service (FSB, Soviet KGB successor) building in Moscow, Russia, on Saturday, February 24. Navalny, 47, Russia’s most well-known opposition politician, unexpectedly died on February 16 in the penal colony, prompting hundreds of Russians across the country to stream to impromptu memorials with flowers and candles.

UNCREDITED This photo taken from video released by Russian Federal Penitentiary Service via SOTAVISION shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears via a video link from the Arctic penal colony in Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenetsk region about 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, where he was serving a 19-year sentence in Kovrov, Russia, on February 15.