“The idea that Putin did not approve the assassination is ridiculous”

The death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in February in an Arctic prison prompted a new wave of sanctions targeting Russia’s economy and derailed prisoner exchange negotiations between Russia and the West. The Wall Street Journal publication says in an investigation that US intelligence agencies have determined that Putin probably did not order Navalny to be killed in the prison camp.

The US intelligence assessment does not challenge Putin’s culpability for the death of Navalny, who had previously been poisoned by members of the Russian secret service, but rather finds that Putin did not order Navalny’s killing at the time. The finding is widely accepted within the intelligence community and shared by multiple agencies, including the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department’s intelligence unit, the people said.

Some European intelligence agencies have been briefed on the US point of view. Some countries remain skeptical that Putin had no direct involvement in Navalny’s death, according to security officials in several European capitals cited by the Wall Street Journal.

In a system as tightly controlled as Putin’s Russia, it is doubtful that Navalny could have suffered any harm without the president being informed beforehand, those European officials said.

President Biden and other world leaders found Putin guilty of last resort, given the 2020 assassination attempt and sending him to a remote gulag. “Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said after the world learned of his death.

And Navalny’s allies remain convinced that his death was orchestrated by the Kremlin. Leonid Volkov, an ally of the dissident, dismissed the US intelligence community’s assessment as naïve. Those who say Putin was not in the know “clearly don’t understand anything about how Russia works these days,” he said. “The idea that Putin was not informed and did not approve the killing of Navalny is ridiculous.”

Slawomir Dębski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw-based think tank close to the Polish presidency, questioned the assessment of the US intelligence community. “Navalnyi was a politically valuable prisoner, and everyone knew that Putin was personally invested in his fate. The chances of this type of accidental death are low,” he said.

The US assessment is based on a range of information, including some classified information, and an analysis of the public facts, including the timing of his death and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election, intelligence sources told the Wall Street Journal.

Because he was the last opposition figure inside Russia with enough political weight to be seen as a possible leader, his death appeared to mark the culmination of a long-running campaign by the Kremlin to kill or exile any possible alternatives to Little bit. Since the invasion of Ukraine, a number of other Russians have died in unusual circumstances on three continents.