They denounce that Vladimir Putin prevented an exchange between opposition leader Alexei Navalny and a former KGB spy

Alexei Navalny He may be in Berlin today recovering from two years of imprisonment in deplorable condition and not placed in a pine box underground if his mother, as agreed with the Russian authorities, had already buried him.

The Russian dissident, murdered 10 days ago or victim of the harsh conditions of a prison colony in northern Russia, near the Arctic Circle where temperatures have reached 25 degrees below zero in recent weeks, he had been included in an exchange for which he would be sent to Germany – together with two American citizens imprisoned in Russia – in exchange for Berlin sending Vadim Krasikov, a high-ranking official of the FSB, the Russian secret service, heir to the KGB, to Moscow.

The pact, revealed in a video by Maria Pevchikh, one of Navalny’s closest allies, it had been negotiated by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, based in London and one of the few who lives abroad and still maintains apparently good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In addition to his spectacular fortune, Abramovich became famous when he bought the Chelsea football club, one of the most powerful in Europe.

The exchange

The complaint alleges that Abramovich He had been the intermediary between Putin and senior Western officials, especially Germans and Americans. The deal included the release of Krasikov, sentenced to decades in prison for the murder of a Chechen opponent in a Berlin park in 2019. In exchange for Krasikov’s surrender, Moscow agreed to send Alexei Navalny and two Americans to Berlin.

The complaint does not specify who those two Americans would be, but they are currently in Russian prisons. the newspaper correspondent The Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich and Paul N. Whelan, former Marines of several nationalities: that of his native Canada, that of his British parents, that of his Irish grandparents, and that of the United States, where he grew up and worked. Whelan was arrested in 2018 and charged with espionage.

In June 2020 he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a process that Western powers have denounced as prefabricated by the Russian authorities to have a person to exchange with Russian agents detained abroad. Both Whelan and Gershkovich would have been imprisoned precisely to be used in a trade and Abramovich would have managed to convince Putin to include Navalny.

The Russian authorities, according to the dissident’s ally, had initially given their approval and the exchange was in the preparation phase when Putin backed down, according to this complaint, and ordered Navalny to be killed on the eve of the day he would be taken from prison to be transferred to Moscow and boarded on a plane to Berlin.

The plan, according to the complaint, had been in the works for more than a year and the idea had been approved by all parties “in the spring of last year”. In the following months, the modalities of the exchange, the location, the exact date and other details would be negotiated.

Putin’s ally assures this Putin’s behavior is “irrational, the behavior of a mad gangster. But the important thing is that he was mad with hatred for Navalny.”

In an interview Putin gave to American far-right Tucker Carlson days before Navalny’s death, Putin said he did not rule out an exchange that included journalist Gershkovich in exchange for “a person with patriotic feelings who eliminated a bandit in a capital European.” in reference to the FSB agent who killed the Chechen oppositionist in Berlin. But Putin did not talk in that interview about including Navalny in a possible exchange.