“Wall Street Journal”: According to US intelligence, Putin did not order Navalny’s murder

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US intelligence agencies have reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin probably did not order opposition politician Alexei Navalny to be killed in an Arctic prison camp in February, the Wall Street Journal reported today, as quoted by .

Navalny, 47, was Putin’s fiercest critic in Russia. His associates, whom authorities described as extremists, accused Putin of killing him and said they would provide evidence for their claims.

The Kremlin denies involvement in the case. Last month, Putin called Navalny’s death “sad” and indicated that he was willing to exchange the convicted politician for a prisoner serving a sentence in the West, provided Navalny never returned to Russia.

Associates of the late opposition leader admitted that such conversations had taken place.

The Wall Street Journal cited an unnamed familiar source as saying that US intelligence agencies have concluded that Putin probably did not issue an order for Navalny to be killed in February.

He also says Washington has not absolved the Russian leader of full responsibility for Navalny’s death, given that the opposition politician has been targeted by Russian authorities for years, jailed on what the West says are political charges. motivated, and was poisoned with a nerve agent in 2020.

The Kremlin denies any involvement in the 2020 poisoning.

could not independently confirm the Wall Street Journal’s claims. The paper cited sources who said the finding was “widely accepted in 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 division.”

The U.S. assessment is based on a range of information – classified intelligence as well as an analysis of public facts, including the period in which Navalny’s death occurred and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election in March, the paper said, citing some of the its sources.

The publication quoted Leonid Volkov, a senior Navalny aide, who called the US conclusions naive and ridiculous.

The 47-year-old critic of the Kremlin died on February 16 in the penal colony IK-3 “Polar Wolf” in the Siberian village of Harp. On March 1, after a quick funeral and thousands waiting to say goodbye, opposition leader Alexei Navalny was buried at the Borisov Cemetery in Moscow.