Putin Killed Navalny? Nyet!
Putin had much to lose from Navalny's death. Biden and Ukraine had much to gain.
By Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon
President Vladimir Putin’s antipathy to Alexei Navalny, a critic who died earlier this month while serving a 19-year prison sentence, is understandable. Navalny led demonstrations designed to prevent Putin’s reelection in the 2017 presidential elections, and he did it with U.S. government backing.
As reported in a New York Times article describing election interference by the U.S. in foreign countries, in 2016 the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization that complements CIA efforts to bring foreign governments into the U.S. orbit, provided 108 grants totaling $6.8 million to Russian organizations for “engaging activists” and “fostering civic engagement.”
NED, whose officials have boasted that it funded Russian democracy protesters, supported organizations Navalny worked for since at least 2006. Russia’s Federal Security Service also have film footage of a meeting between Vladimir Ashurkov, the executive director of Navalny’s anti-corruption NGO, and James William Thomas Ford, an official at the British Embassy that Russia believed to be an MI6 agent. For these and other reasons, Russian officials have long considered Navalny a CIA operative.
Navalny started his political career as a Russian version of an anti-immigrant, anti Muslim white nationalist. His National Russian Liberation Movement (PEOPLE), styled as an nationalistic anti-corruption group, produced inflammatory videos associating Muslims with cockroaches and immigrants from Islamic regions with tooth decay. During his candidacy for Mayor of Moscow in 2013, he courted the antisemite vote by suggesting that those present at a celebration “make the first toast for the Holocaust,” by referring to religious Jews as “dandies in fox hats and rags,” and by declaring that “whoever wants to live in Russia has to become Russian – in the full sense of the word.”
Along the way, Navalny founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation and a transportation logistics business that, ironically, itself became embroiled in scandals, including in 2012 when the Russian branch of the French cosmetics giant, Yves Rocher, alleged Navalny’s firm had defrauded it.
Two-years later, following criticism from Navalny supporters, Yves Rocher backed away from the charge, saying it didn’t want to be embroiled in politics. The saga came to a head in 2019 after a defamation case Navalny brought against Yves Rocher was dismissed by a French court, along with all of Navalny’s allegations.
Although the Western media generally presents fawning coverage of Navalny, there are notable exceptions. Paul Craig Roberts lamented the West’s duplicity in failing to report on Navalny’s criminal record regarding Yves Rocher and a state-owned timber firm.
Salon, in a 2017 expose headlined “Dictator vs. democrat? Not quite: Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is no progressive hero,” detailed Navalny’s embrace of neo-Nazis and skinheads, and his role as “a co-organizer of the ‘Russian March’ —an annual parade that uses slogans like ‘Russia for the Russians and ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’”. Navalny’s supporters’ hate Putin, in part, because Putin is insufficiently pro-Russia.
Amnesty International also outed Navalny, albeit temporarily. In Feb 2021, it stripped Navalny of his designation as a “Prisoner of Conscience” because of his history of racism, only to restore it in May because of the “negative impacts this has had on Alexei Navalny personally, and the activists in Russia and around the world who tirelessly campaign for his freedom.”
Liberal Russians also distance themselves from Navalny. Yabloko, a European-style liberal-socialist political party that represents the best hope of reformers to win political power, long ago expelled Navalny. It is so repulsed by his supporters that prior to Russia’s 2021 elections, it told Navalny supporters — whom it sees as having responded to Navalny’s “whipped up primitive social hate” — not to vote for Yabloko.
Almost immediately upon Navalny’s death, which reportedly occurred after he fell unconscious following exercise at the “Polar Wolf” penal colony north of the Arctic Circle, just about everyone from President Joe Biden on down accused Putin of being a thug who had him murdered. But why would Putin, who carefully cultivates his public image, choose to kill Navalny, especially now?
Navalny posed no political threat to Putin, whose conduct of the war in Ukraine has given him an 85% approval rating. Although the western media lionizes Navalny as a courageous democracy fighter and a serious challenger to Putin, surveys by the independent Levada Center — no friend of Putin’s and viewed as credible in the West — show most Russians hold him in low regard: 57% disapprove of his activities, 9% approve, and fewer than 1% would vote for him over Putin.
More importantly, Putin had just pulled off an unprecedented media coup through a two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson that drew 179 million views on X and an estimated 1 billion on YouTube. As put by CNN: “It was a massive propaganda victory for Putin, who can — and will — now twist the encounter for his own ends. If there was any doubt that Putin did not view the sit-down with Carlson as a big win, a glance at how his own state-run media covered the affair should erase it. Immediately after Carlson published the chat online, “Putin’s mouthpieces rushed to amplify it.”
It defies belief that Putin would want to trash his propaganda victory by having the world’s media change the channel and focus instead on portraying him as a thug. Navalny’s death would also detract from Putin’s recent success in Ukraine, where Russian troops took Avdiivka, a proud bastion of Ukrainian resistance.
Putin had little to gain and much to lose from Navalny’s death. In contrast, Putin’s enemies — chiefly Ukraine and the Biden Administration — had much to gain.
Ukraine and Biden have been frustrated by the U.S. Congress’s reluctance to continue funding Ukraine. The familiar portrayal of Putin as a cold-blooded killer promised to sway votes in Congress to opening the purse strings. Ukraine would savor Navalny’s death for another reason — Navalny famously denigrated Ukrainians and opposed the return of Crimea to Ukraine.
If Putin wanted to kill Navalny, he would have done so at a time calculated to benefit him. Ukraine and the U.S., in contrast, didn’t have the luxury of time: Ukraine’s military needs are urgent.
If the 47-year-old Navalya died of a natural cause, the gods would have given Ukraine and the U.S. the gift of his passing. Otherwise, in all likelihood, his fate lay at the hands of the Ukraine or the U.S.
Navalny’s is one death that can’t plausibly be attributed to Putin.
Patricia Adams is an economist and executive director of Probe International. Lawrence Solomon is an award-winning journalist and author of The Deniers, a #1 environmental best-seller.