AP
- Alexey Navalny, Putin's political foe, died at an Arctic penal colony on February 16.
- Navalny was close to being freed in a prisoner swap at the time of his death.
- Navalny's ally, Maria Pevchikh, said Putin had the dissident killed to prevent the swap.
Alexey Navalny, Vladimir Putin's political nemesis, was on the verge of being freed as part of a high-stakes prisoner exchange before his sudden death, according to his staffers.
In a video posted to YouTube, anti-corruption activist Maria Pevchikh alleged that the Russian president had Navalny killed because he didn't want the exchange to go through.
"Navalny was supposed to be free in the coming days because we had received a decision on his exchange," said Pevchikh, who is the chairwoman of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which Navalny founded.
"In early February, Putin was offered to swap the FSB killer, Vladim Krasikov, who is serving time for murder in Berlin for two American citizens and Alexey Navalny," she added.
Pevchikh did not name the two US nationals who were being considered as part of the prisoner swap. However, Reuters noted that the US had been trying to secure the return Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and former US marine Paul Whelan.
Negotiations for a prisoner exchange had been underway for two years and were at the final stages on the night before his death, she said.
Putin had expressed interest in a prisoner swap in his interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the beginning of February.
The Russian president said he would be open to exchanging Gershkovich — who is being detained in a Moscow prison — for a person who had "due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals" during "the events in the Caucasus"
His comments were widely interpreted as being in reference to Krasikov, who was convicted for the murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvil, a Georgian military officer of Chechen descent, in 2019.
Navalny died suddenly on February 16 at an Arctic penal colony where he was being held over charges that were widely seen as politically motivated. The Kremlin denied Russia had any involvement in his death.
However, world leaders, commentators, and Navalny's family have firmly placed the blame on Putin.
Maxim Alyukov, a political sociologist at King's College London with a focus on Russia, previously told BI that Navalny's death was consistent with a "political killing," serving as a warning to others who may try to defy Putin ahead of the upcoming election.
Callum Fraser, a Research Fellow in the International Security Studies department at RUSI, specializing in Russian foreign policy, agreed."Putin could very well have wanted to remove Navalny, a symbolic figure of Russian opposition, to reduce the chances of dissent within the election period," Fraser told BI.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny's mother, said in a statement on Friday that she was being blackmailed by Russian authorities, who she said threatened to "do something" to her son's body unless she agreed to a secret funeral.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's spokesperson, confirmed on Saturday that his body had been returned to his mother. It is not yet known whether the family will be allowed to pay their respects in a public setting.
"The funeral is still pending. We do not know if the authorities will interfere to carry it out as the family wants and as Alexey deserves. We will inform you as soon as there is news," she wrote on X.
Representatives for the Kremlin and the US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.