Last month, Putin called Navalny’s demise “sad” and said he had been ready to hand the jailed politician over to the West in a prisoner exchange provided Navalny never return to Russia. Navalny’s allies said such talks had been under way […] Washington had not absolved the Russian leader of overall responsibility for Navalny’s death however, given the opposition politician had been targeted by Russian authorities for years, jailed on charges the West said were politically motivated, and had been poisoned in 2020 with a nerve agent[, for which Russia also denies responsibility].
Reuters could not independently verify the Journal report, which cited sources as saying the finding had been “broadly accepted within 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 unit.”
Assuming that what WSJ reported is indeed true, that it is widely accepted hypotheses within intelligence community (Reuters could not verify they).
What and how intelligence community would know that? By the fact that someone was talking about exchange? And this preclude Putin from ordering execution before elections how? I actually do not believe that this “intelligence community” is that stupid to hold it as “wildly held belief”. That’s bad WSJ reporting.
What else do we know? That Russian officials deny that? The same officials that denied presence of Russian military when they captured Crimea? If anything, them denying from the first day shows opposite situation. Normally, one would investigate it, but it is as if they knew the answer from day 1.