London:
U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely did not order the death of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in a prison camp in the Arctic in February, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
Navalny, 47 when he died, was Putin's fiercest domestic critic. His allies, labeled extremists by authorities, accused Putin of killing him and have said they will provide evidence to support their claim.
The Kremlin has denied any state involvement. Last month, Putin called Navalny's demise “sad” and said he had been willing to extradite the jailed politician to the West in a prisoner swap on the condition that Navalny never returned to Russia. Navalny's allies said such talks were underway.
The Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said Saturday that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Putin likely did not order Navalny's killing in February.
However, it said Washington had not absolved the Russian leader of overall responsibility for Navalny's death as the opposition politician had been targeted by Russian authorities for years, imprisoned on charges that the West said were politically motivated and in 2020 was poisoned with a nerve agent. .
The Kremlin denies state involvement in the 2020 poisoning.
Reuters could not independently verify the Journal report, which cited sources saying the finding was “widely 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 Department of Foreign Affairs. intelligence unit.”
The US assessment was based on a range of information, including some classified intelligence, and an analysis of public facts, including the timing of Navalny's death and how it overshadowed Putin's re-election in March, the newspaper said.
It quoted Leonid Volkov, a senior aide to Navalny, who called the US findings naive and ridiculous.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)