President Biden said that there was “no doubt” that President Vladimir V. Putin’s government was behind the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken dissident who Russian authorities said had died at a remote Arctic prison on Friday.
“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Mr. Biden said at a White House news conference, while acknowledging that the United States still did not know details of what happened.
“What has happened to Navalny is even more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled.”
Speaking at the White House, in his first comments following news that one of the Russian leader’s most vocal critics was dead, the US president said “like millions of people around the world”, he was “literally not surprised and outraged by the reported death of Alexei Navalny”.
Putin is responsible. What has happened and evolving is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world.
Putin does not only target citizens of other countries, as we’ve seen in what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.
In questions from reporters following his address, Biden said the US was still awaiting formal confirmation of the Russian opposition leader’s death, but had no reason to doubt it.
Asked if he thought it was “an assassination”, Biden said.
The answer is we don’t know exactly what happened. But there is no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.
Groups of Russians laid flowers at makeshift memorials for Alexei Navalny on Friday, despite warnings from authorities that such gatherings were illegal.
Also Read: Russian Opposition Leader and Putin Critic Alexei Navalny, Dies Aged 47
Images on social media showed dozens of people queueing to place flowers at monuments to victims of political repression in the cities of Moscow and St Petersburg, AFP reported.
Authorities in the Russian capital said they were aware of calls online “to take part in a mass rally in the center of Moscow” and warned people against attending.
Protests are illegal in Russia under strict anti-dissent laws, and authorities have clamped down particularly harshly on rallies in support of Navalny. Officials in Moscow were filmed stripping people of protest banner.
In Moscow, dozens laid red and white roses at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of Soviet-era repression opposite the headquarters of Russia’s FSB security services, the former home of the feared Soviet secret police.
At least one person was detained for holding up a placard that appeared to say “murderers” on it, according to a video posted by the independent Sota Telegram channel.
A handful of people were pictured gathering to lay flowers at a bridge next to the Kremlin where the Putin critic Boris Nemtsov was killed in 2015.
Police were filmed dispersing people who had gathered in the snow at a memorial in the central city of Kazan.
His last post to his wife two days ago said there were thousands of kilometres between them “but I feel that you are near every second”. He leaves two children, Dasha, who is studying in the US and Zakhar, who is still at school.
His mother Lyudmila Navalnaya was quoted as saying: “I don’t want to hear any condolences. We saw him in prison on the 12th [February], in a meeting. He was alive, healthy and happy.”
Navalny’s close aide Leonid Volkov cautioned that there was no way to confirm what had happened but said the prison authorities’ statement amounted to a confession that they had killed him.
There was minimal coverage on Russia’s state TV channels, although one report by RT suggested Navalny had suffered a blood clot.
That was ridiculed by Moscow specialist Alexander Polupan, who had treated Navalny in the past. He said that kind of diagnosis could only be made from a post-mortem examination.
Within minutes of Navalny’s death being announced by the prison service, the international community hailed the courage of Vladimir Putin’s biggest domestic adversary.
France said he had paid with his life for resisting Russian “oppression”, while Norway’s foreign minister said Russian authorities bore a great responsibility for his death.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said merely that Navalny’s death had been “reported to the president”, who was on a visit to the city of Chelyabinsk. “Medics must somehow figure this out,” Mr Peskov said.
UK Foreign Minister David Cameron said “no-one should be in any doubt about the dreadful nature of Putin’s regime in Russia after what has just happened”.
Most of the Russian president’s critics have fled Russia, but Alexei Navalny returned in January 2021, after months of medical treatment. In August 2020 he was poisoned at the end of a trip to Siberia with a Novichok nerve agent.
His team succeeded in flying him out to Germany for specialist treatment and on his return to Moscow he was immediately taken into custody. He had been accompanied on the flight from Germany by his wife Yulia Navalnaya, embracing her at passport control before being led away.
He would never leave jail again in the next 37 months.
Another of his closest aides, Maria Pevchikh, said it was clear how important Navalny had been: “What a gigantic responsibility weighs on us… to continue his work with dignity… and to always remain as brave and as courageous as him.”
Navalny, who was 47, had long sought to challenge Vladimir Putin at the ballot box, but he was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election. Next month, Russia’s leader will stand unchallenged by any meaningful opposition.
Anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin was banned from standing in the election because of supposed irregularities found in the thousands of signatures submitted in support of his candidacy.
Navalny, whose opposition began in the form of an anti-corruption campaign, is the latest in a string of prominent Russian figures who have died while challenging Vladimir Putin’s rule.
Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on a Moscow bridge a stone’s throw from the Kremlin in 2015, and Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in August 2023 in an unexplained plane crash weeks after leading his mercenaries in an armed mutiny.
Yet Navalny repeatedly laughed off his friends’ concerns for his health. He was moved from a penal colony east of Moscow in December and was not seen for weeks until he reappeared in a penal colony in the Arctic town of Kharp.
Navalny said he had been taken on a 20-day trip around Russia, telling reporters during a court appearance by video that his conditions were “much better” than in his previous penal colony in Vladimir.
However, he was repeatedly punished by his prisons with solitary confinement. His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said last month he had spent more than 280 days in isolation.
Navalny had not been due to leave prison until his 70s, because of his most recent conviction for extremism last August. It was his third jail sentence and supporters accused the Kremlin of trying to silence him for good.
Russian human rights activist and journalist Eva Merkacheva said on Friday that he had been placed in solitary confinement at least 27 times, saying it “could not but play a role” in his death.
In such extreme conditions doctors knew that such punishment was very harmful to the human body, so under the law no-one could be given more than 15 days in isolation, she said.
By Agencies
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