Why Alexei Navalny was killed
The Shakespearean tragedy behind the murder of Putin's main enemy
This Monday, the day after his re-election as president, Vladimir Putin mentioned Alexei Navalny's name for the first time. Before that, he had always avoided it - referring to Navalny as "that man," “that character” or even “the patient from Berlin”. This time, Putin tried to explain the situation, saying that people are dying not only in Russian prisons, but in American prisons too. And then confirmed the information that Navalny was to be exchanged.
Now it has become clear why exactly Navalny was killed. This Shakespearean tragedy becomes even more terrible and ridiculous: Putin had almost forgotten about the existence of his implacable enemy, and was reminded of him only due to the international effort to save Navalny.
We know that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sources of information are limited. On a daily basis he receives dossiers with reports from the Russian security services. He absolutely does not use the Internet, he has no cell phone, he has never gone on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Although, he might have heard about the existence of these social networks - sometimes his aides may bring him some posts printed on paper. Consequently, he doesn't choose the bloggers he wants to follow - his intelligence services decide for him.
Sources say that in February 2021, the security services reported to Putin: Navalny's problem has been solved, the opposition leader has been neutralized, he is in jail and will never be a source of trouble again. This, of course, was an exaggeration - but the Russian security services really believed it. They believed that no prisoner could influence political life; he would immediately be forgotten, disappear from the news and from the political space.
However, this did not happen to Navalny - and this is not only his merit, but also a sign of the times - modern technology allows a politician to remain a leader of public opinion even in solitary confinement. For the past two years, Navalny wrote letters every day, and his team published them as texts on Twitter and Instagram.
The uninformed wondered: how is this possible? Surprisingly, most Russian colonies are equipped with a Zonatelekom system that allows you to send letters to prisoners via email. You can write an email to any person - and the guards will print it out, then a censor will read it, then it will be taken to the prisoner, he will handwrite a reply - and a screenshot of his letter will be sent to you. This is exactly how Navalny could communicate with millions of his followers.
However, Putin, of course, did not know about all this. Putin believed that the moment Navalny was imprisoned, he dissolved, disappeared, ceased to exist as a politician.
This is exactly the idea that Putin's propagandists have always expressed. Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov and the head of RT TV channel Margarita Simonyan have repeatedly said that everyone has forgotten Navalny, he no longer exists, he is not important or necessary. This is strange, because both Peskov and Simonyan use the Internet and could assess how popular and important any word written by Navalny was - but they repeated what their bosses thought.
So did the bureaucrats from the FSB or the Russian penitentiary system, the FSIN, none of them could dare to dissuade the president. They promised him once, in 2021, that Navalny was neutralized and forgotten, and would never bother him again. That meant they simply could not afford to bring up Navalny - and they strenuously concealed everything connected with him. If they informed Putin about Navalny’s continued activism that meant they had to admit to their own failure.
My sources claim that even last December, when Navalny was transferred from a prison in the Vladimir region to a colony in the Arctic Circle, that was not an order from Putin, but an initiative from below - that was an attempt of the security forces to correct their mistake. The prison in the settlement of Kharp is not equipped with a Zonatelekom system, which means that it is absolutely impossible to send letters from there on a daily basis - digitalization has not yet reached this colony, which means that Navalny had to be truly silent and controlled there, they were sure. That's where he would finally be forgotten, the law enforcers believed.
However, over the past two years, according to Navalny's associates Maria Pevchichykh and Hristo Grozev, there have been talks about his exchange. Yes, of course, Alexei himself returned to Russia of his own free will in 2020. But since then, the situation has changed radically: Russia attacked Ukraine, Putin killed thousands of people, and Navalny spent most of his imprisonment in a punishment cell - there was no doubt that the Russian authorities wanted to kill him.
The prisoner exchange negotiations were complicated, involving several countries, and at one point a five-for-five exchange scheme was worked out. Investigator Hristo Grozev told me that he realized from the beginning that the most valuable agent for Putin, imprisoned abroad, was Vadim Krasikov, a GRU agent imprisoned in Germany for the murder of Chechen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. It was his release, Grozev assumed, that Putin would seek. And the only prisoner whose release German society would want, and whom it would agree to exchange for Krasikov, was only Navalny. Germans knew who Navalny was; it was at Berlin's Charité clinic that he was once saved from death in 2020.
Then came the long negotiations. They were conducted by a variety of officials, diplomats, intelligence officers, social activists - they tried to find a working formula for the exchange.
However, there was one problem - according to all sources, Putin was not a part of these negotiations. Of course, he knew that negotiations were taking place. However, all of the numerous negotiators on the Russian side have all this time been hesitant to go to him and admit that the most important subject of these negotiations was Navalny. This was the name that everyone was afraid to say. In other words, all the promises that have been made in recent years about an exchange have meant exactly nothing.
Putin himself has never called Navalny by name. And neither did his cronies - especially since, after the failed poisoning in 2020, after the sensational investigation into his assassination attempt, and after the super-popular investigative movie "Putin's Palace," which was watched by 125 million people, Putin never wanted to hear the name "Navalny" again. He preferred to think that Navalny was forgotten, destroyed, no longer important to anyone.
Apparently, Putin heard about Navalny for the first time after a long break only in early February of this year. At that time, Roman Abramovich, once an oligarch and now the only constantly working backchannel of communication between Russia and the West, informed Putin that the final prisoner exchange scheme had been agreed upon. The West was ready to exchange five for five: there were spies, political prisoners, murderer Vadim Krasikov, American journalist Evan Gershkovich, and - and this came as a surprise to Putin - Alexei Navalny.
This was what Putin could not believe: was there really a country that demanded Navalny's release? Did anyone really need him? Was he still remembered?
The affirmative answer, in general, became a verdict. No, in fact, just a reminder was a death sentence. In fact, Putin had long believed that Navalny was dead. He had long been sure that the problem had been eliminated. He regarded the absence of information about Navalny, which was fearfully concealed by the security services, as a sign that Navalny was a thing of the past. But when Putin learned that Navalny was still alive, still important, still a factor in international politics, he did not hesitate.
In fact, on March 18 Putin confirmed this - he admitted that he discussed Navalny's exchange with a person "who does not work for his administration".
According to Christo Grozev, at the moment when Putin told Tucker Carlson that he was ready to exchange Evan Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, he had already known about the proposed exchange scheme. And he was clearly not happy about it. Putin agreed to the swap - but only so that Navalny would not be in the scheme. He was not going to release the man who had humiliated him in front of the whole country, in front of the whole world. He could have forgotten to let him go - but he could not have let him go free.
That is why he ordered to get rid of Navalny immediately - so that he could continue negotiations on an exchange and never again think of the man whose name he had never uttered.
However, it's just like in Shakespeare’s Macbeth - Putin will never be allowed to forget this crime. Navalny has become immortal, and Putin will always be reminded of him.