Putin had Navalny killed to thwart prisoner swap, allies claim
Alexei Navalny’s allies have alleged that Vladimir Putin had the opposition leader killed in jail to sabotage a prisoner swap in which Navalny would have been exchanged for a convicted hitman jailed in Germany.
Maria Pevchikh, a close ally of the opposition leader, said in a video that Navalny and two US nationals were in line to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB security service hitman who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a Chechen former separatist in Berlin.
“Navalny should have been free in the next few days because we had secured a decision to exchange him,” Pevchikh said. “I received confirmation that the negotiations were at their final stage on the evening of 15 February.”
Pevchuk alleged that Navalny was killed a day later because the Russian president could not tolerate the thought of him being free.
“I’m telling you this story so that you have an answer to the question of why Navalny was killed now,” she said.
Pevchuk claimed Putin decided to “get rid of the object of bargaining” by killing Navalny. “It’s absolutely illogical … It’s the behaviour of a mad mafioso,” she said.
The Russian authorities claim Navalny, Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent, fell unconscious and died after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony. Russia later said Navalny died of natural causes.
In recent months there have been murmurs that western leaders might try to include Navalny’s name in a list of people to be part of a potential prisoner exchange between Russia and the west.
Sergei Guriev, an economist and longtime Navalny ally, told the Guardian in September that he knew from “direct and indirect” correspondence with Navalny that the politician’s insistence that he would remain in Russia no longer applied.
Pevchikh said Navalny’s allies had been working since the start of the Ukraine war on a plan to get him out of Russia as part of a prisoner exchange involving “Russian spies in exchange for political prisoners”.
Pevchikh did not name the two US citizens who would be part of the swap, though Putin previously said he was open to exchanging the jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich for Krasikov.
Russia has long sought to involve Krasikov in a prisoner exchange with the west. Moscow previously requested that Krasikov be released in a swap for the US marine Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in Russia. The US at the time was unable to deliver on the request for Krasikov.
Pevchuk said her team had made desperate efforts and tried to find intermediaries, even approaching Henry Kissinger, but said western governments had failed to show the necessary political will.
“Officials, American and German, nodded their heads in understanding. They recounted how important it was to help Navalny and political prisoners, they shook hands, made promises and did nothing,” she said.
Navalny is just the latest of Putin’s opponents to have died over the course of Russian leader’s nearly 25 years in power.