Russian leader accused of ordering Navalny’s death to stop him being exchanged for FSB hitman serving life sentence in Germany
Alexei Navalny’s allies have alleged that Vladimir Putin had the opposition leader killed in jail to sabotage a prisoner swap in which Navalny would have been exchanged for a convicted hitman jailed in Germany.
Maria Pevchikh, a close ally of the opposition leader, said in a video that Navalny and two US nationals were in line to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB security service hitman who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a Chechen former separatist in Berlin.
“Navalny should have been free in the next few days because we had secured a decision to exchange him,” Pevchikh said. “I received confirmation that the negotiations were at their final stage on the evening of 15 February.” Navalny was reported dead on 16 February.
Earlier in his political career (at least as late as early 2010s) he indeed skewed much more right, somewhat moderately right-wing. For instance he used to partake in russian marches, which are annual demonstrations of partially nationalist, mostly just conservative factions. Here is him speaking at Russian March 2011. He also made several comments about the status of Chechen Republic within Russian Federation (a complicated region that has lead to Russian armed forces clashing with local gov/insurgents in two Chechen wars), I think mainly arguing that it should be excluded from Russian Federation.
I, however, still believe that in late 2010s he genuinely switched to much more liberal views, mainly focusing on liberal populism.
In general, while he definitely started off in conservative crowd, it would be a huge overstatement to argue that he continued to be an active fascist and anti-islamist right up to his death.
Thank you.