US intelligence officials have determined Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, an official says.
likely didn't order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.
While US officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.
Navalny, 47, Russia's best-known opposition politician and Putin's most persistent foe, died on February 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated. He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.In March, a month after Navalny's death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.
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