Alexei Navalny’s February death in an Arctic penal colony prompted a new wave of sanctions targeting Russia’s economy, upended delicate negotiations to exchange prisoners between Russia and the West, and left Russia’s limited opposition in disarray.
Russian President Vladimir Putin might not have planned for it to happen when it did.
U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Putin likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed at the notoriously brutal prison camp in February, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that deepens the mystery about the circumstances of his death.
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The assessment doesn’t dispute Putin’s culpability for Navalny’s death, but rather finds he probably didn’t order it at that moment. The finding is broadly accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit, the people said.
Some European intelligence agencies have been told of the U.S. view. Certain countries remain skeptical that Putin wouldn’t have had a direct hand in Navalny’s death, according to security officials from several European capitals. In a system as tightly controlled as Putin’s Russia, it is doubtful that harm could have come to Navalny without the president’s prior awareness, those European officials said.
President Biden and other world leaders have held Putin ultimately at fault based on years of the Kremlin’s targeting Navalny, including by allegedly attempting to assassinate him in 2020 and sending him to a remote gulag. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said after the world learned of the death.
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But the U.S. now believes the timing of his demise wasn’t intended by Putin.
Navalny’s allies insist that his death was orchestrated by the Kremlin. In a statement, Leonid Volkov, a longtime Navalny ally, rejected the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment as naive.
Those who assert that Putin wasn’t aware “clearly do not understand anything about how modern day Russia runs,” he said. “The idea of Putin being not informed and not approving killing Navalny is ridiculous.”
Slawomir Dębski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw think tank close to Poland’s presidency, cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment. “Navalny was a high-value prisoner, politically, and everybody knew that Putin was personally invested in his fate. The chances for this kind of unintended death are low,” he said.
The U.S. assessment is based on a range of information, including some classified intelligence, and an analysis of public facts, including the timing of his death and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election, some of the people said.
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