Much is being talked about the February 16 death of convicted Russian activist Alexei Navalny, who was serving time in prison for extremism charges. Navalny was once described by Western media as a populist and a racist (even compared to Donald Trump), but now is being lauded post-mortem as a hero and a martyr, and his death is being attributed to the Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. Let us see what the evidence is.
A typical news report quotes Sergei Biziukin, a “fugitive” opposition activist in Russia as saying (without specifying who is “they”): “They killed him. Even if not on that very day, several years of torture is also a way of killing.” At the same time, Navalny’s sudden death, apparently caused by a blood clot, is disputed on the basis that “he was alive, healthy, optimistic”, according to his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya, who saw him in jail on February 12.
This does not sound much like the description of someone being severely tortured – just compare it with the state of activist and journalist Julian Assange, for instance. Ivan Zhdanov, the current head of the “Fund to Fight Corruption” (formerly headed by Navalny) has a different theory: “Specifically, it was Putin who killed him.” OVD Info, a human rights group, on the other hand, is quoted, in the same news report, as stating that “There’s no need to poison or kill him in some other violent way – one just has to wait.” Yes, eventually people do die – some sooner than others.
There is a peculiar tendency to laud as a hero anyone who was a critic of the Russian government. Navalny was no Assange, though. He was an anti-corruption blogger and activist implicated in a series of embezzlement accusations himself, managing millions in a fund which received money from overseas, while nobody really knew the source of it – the same can be said of his 2013 political campaign. The Yves Rocher case, involving his family also, seems shady. When he was a candidate, only 4% would “definitely” vote for him in the presidential election. Moreover, Navalny was, according to Marlène Laruelle, Research Professor and Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University, a controversial supporter of Russian ethnic nationalism (in a traditionally multinational state). This is by no means the hugely popular figure in Russia described by most of the English language press and Western leaders.
Back to assassination allegations, it might just be interesting to compare Western press coverage of Navalny’s death with Jeffrey Epstein’s one. The latter was of course the convicted American financier and sexual trafficker, who famously kept the company of a young “harem” and procured multiple young women, teenagers and children who were abused by himself and his wealthy associates.
The billionaire’s private passenger jet was known as the “Lolita Express”, a nod to Nabokov’s famous novel about pedophilia, and would often fly minors and some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the world (including former US president Bill Clinton and British royalty) to Epistein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands – the location was dubbed, creepily enough, “Slave Island”. It is still unclear whether all of his associates who flew there did so to engage in illegal acts or knew about the activities that went on there – but clearly many of them did. Epstein, one may recall, kept hidden cameras on his properties, allegedly to record the lewd acts of his powerful associates and clients (supposedly including Prince Andrew, the Duke of York) with the underage girls he and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell procured, as part of an “insurance policy”, that is, blackmail.
Someone in Epstein’s position could certainly benefit from turning state’s evidence – that, however, would also cause trouble to prominent members of the Western elite. His death at his jail cell in August 2019 was ruled as a suicide by hanging, but his lawyers have disputed the ruling. In addition, guards did not check on him for three hours and falsified records. Moreover, two security cameras happened to be broken, and the surveillance video was erased due to “technical errors”. It is no wonder then there has been much public skepticism about the man’s true cause of death, and “Epstein didn’t kill himself” became a popular internet meme.
For the sake of comparison, there simply are no such strange coincidences or suspicious discrepancies in Navalny’s death. No contradictory or falsified prison records. The Russian man’s body did show signs of bruises, but that is consistent with seizures. Seizures in turn are known to be frequent among people with blood clots, for instance. His body also showed traces of heart massage, which indicates attempts to “resuscitate” a man experiencing cardiac arrest. That is not very much consistent with an assassination scenario – which would normally include corrupt or paid off officials leaving the prisoner unattended. A Reuters report conveniently cites an “unidentified prisoner” talking about some “strange commotion” in the penal colony before Navalny’s death, but adding that “it was not possible to verify” such an account.
All over the world, political activists are sometimes assassinated. On the other hand, 47-year-old men in prison with a habit of smoking do have sudden heart attacks and other health issues sometimes and may die. It happens all the time. The same Western press that describes Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson as a major propaganda operation, also assumes Putin is directly behind Navalny’s death. PR-wise, it would not make much sense to give such an interview and a few days later have one of his famous critics (a Western media darling) assassinated. The man was serving time in prison and posed no threat even if one assumes the Russian head of state is keen on just assassinating anyone who criticizes him.
Navalny’s death is of course being heavily politicized, which is inevitable, and even weaponized, with US President Joe Biden meeting with his widow and announcing further sanctions against Vladimir Putin. Whether one likes Putin or not, before jumping to wild conclusions, one should first assess the existing evidence. The problem is that in the age of information warfare and in the middle of the New Cold War, with the current political climate, it will be hard to get balanced coverage of the matter.
