By Blake Fleetwood / Original to ScheerPost
Vladimir Putin cannot be happy with Alexei Navalny’s death, at this time. He has been trying to get a peace agreement in Ukraine, where 300,000 young people have died. He called for a cease-fire and a “frozen conflict” in December 2023, according to The New York Times, and now hopes that an anti-war segment of Republicans in Congress will cut off U.S. funds and force a “frozen conflict” in Ukraine.
This is why he had the long interview with Tucker Carlson recently, to make his case and soften up the West. Navalny’s sudden death makes all these goals that much more difficult.
President Biden is using this death to launch a massive anti-Russian propaganda campaign to goad Congress into passing a $60 billion aid bill to keep the Ukraine war going.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III admitted months ago that the Ukrainian war was an effort to degrade Russia’s military capability. In effect he acknowledged the reality that Ukraine’s conflict is a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.
Sadly, Navalny, as a martyr, has become more useful to the West and attracted more attention than his statements from his Arctic prison ever did.
NATO allies and the mainstream media have seized the opportunity, in a frenzy, to demonize Putin and thus set back any possible path to peace or a cease-fire.
This is not that difficult to do. There is no question that Putin has often demonized himself, and many political opponents have been murdered or suffered untimely deaths.
Most recently, an onboard plane explosion killed Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary leader who commanded a private right-wing military force, Wagner.
Boris Y. Nemtsov, a vocal opposition leader, was shot and killed in central Moscow in 2015, days before he was to lead a protest march.
Anna Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old journalist for Novaya Gazeta and a critic of Putin’s, was shot in the head and found dead in her Moscow apartment in 2006.
In 2018 Russian intelligence officer turned British spy, Sergei V. Skripal,was found unconscious with his daughter on a park bench in England. He had been poisoned with Novichok, the same nerve agent used unsuccessfully against Navalny two years later.
Whatever else he may be, Putin is not stupid, and this sudden death is not good for him.
There is so far no precise evidence of how Navalny died. Some speculation suggests that he died of a blood clot, but this is often the euphemism Russian prison authorities attribute to suspicious deaths. Maybe he died of natural causes, but this is not likely.
Navalny was not always the “Champion of Democracy” that he is being hailed as by the Washington Post. He started politics on the far right, and in 2007, he founded the National Russian Liberation Movement, which was an anti-immigrant chauvinist party.
Navalny supported the Russian invasion of its neighbor Georgia in 2008 and wrote that “Russia must recognize the sovereignty and right to self-determination of those countries that are our historical allies, in particular, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia,”meaning Russia had a right to take over these Russian-leaning areas of Georgia, which it did do.
At the time Navalny used derogatory, dehumanizing words referring to Georgians and later apologized. He also supported Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014. In an interview, he asserted that it would “remain a part of Russia” and would “never become a part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future.”
Ukrainians quite rightly have always been suspicious of Navalny and his nationalist views, which have been modified in recent years to keep support from the West.
Three years ago, Amnesty International stripped Navalny of his “Prisoner of Conscience” status. Amnesty International concluded that comments made by Navalny some 15 years ago, including a video that appeared to compare immigrants to cockroaches, amounted to “hate speech” which was incompatible with the label “Prisoner of Conscience.”
Nevertheless, Amnesty continued to call for Navalny’s release from prison.
After becoming a serious opponent to Putin, Navalny gave up his more noxious views and settled on “anti-corruption” and more democracy themes.
While Navalny was anathema to many corrupt oligarchs, he maintained good relations with some sections of the oligarchy, which afforded him more visibility than other dissidents.
Who are the obvious suspects?
Putin’s main opposition comes not from democratic left-wing critics, but from right-wing opponents, bloggers, often pro-military. These critics claim that he has not done enough to win the Ukraine war. They could have acted against Navalny to sabotage Putin’s efforts to bring about an immediate negotiated settlement.
Other corrupt oligarchs, who were exposed by Navalny, certainly had a strong motive for wanting him dead.
Further speculation might focus on elements of the right-wing Ukrainian military who are staunchly opposed to a cease-fire and know that this death would surely discredit Putin in the West.
Ukrainian intelligence agents could be in the mix also. They have been implicated in the blowing up of the two Nord Stream pipelines (which have decimated Germany’s economy) and in assassinating right-wing political figures deep inside Russia.
Another obvious suspect might be a low level avid Putin disciple who thought he was doing what the Kremlin wanted. As Henry II declared in 1170, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Meanwhile, Putin is set to win an overwhelming fifth presidential six-year term in next month’s elections.
False flag conspiracies to whip up a public war frenzy have been plentiful since the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba with 260 U.S. sailors died, which helped start the Spanish War of Independence.
The Gulf of Tonkin fabrication in 1964 when President Johnson falsely claimed that a US warship, the USS Maddox, had been twice attacked is another lie that started the Vietnam War, during which 58,220 Americans, and three million Vietnamese died.
Undoubtedly, these false flag incidents are more sophisticated and harder to detect today than they ever were in the past.
But perhaps all these conspiracy theories are wild speculation. The answer may well be much simpler. It may be that Navalny simply died from harsh arctic prison conditions. This is what the editor-in-chief of Russia’s most famous independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, believes.
There is a staggering hypocrisy of many Western leaders venomously denouncing the Russian regime for the death of Navalny for their own political ends. In the meantime they keep supporting the long imprisonment and (alleged torture), of Julian Assange, another fighter for free speech and transparency.
The mainstream media seems to forget that Washington and other western nations have gotten very friendly with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who directed the hit squad that murdered and dismembered Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi not so long ago.
In the end, Navalny was a courageous fighter for Russian democracy; a hero who gave his life fighting the massive corruption of the oligarchy.
Putin bears enormous blame for imprisoning Navalny on bogus charges and ruthlessly allowing the torture of his opponent, whose only crime was being a non-violent advocate for democracy.
Putin should have demanded that extra care and caution should have been taken to insure Navalny’s survival, especially after he bravely showed his great patriotism by returning to his homeland after his poisoning, when he could have stayed safe in exile.
There can be no defense for Putin’s ruthless behavior, but it is unlikely that Putin had anything to gain by killing Navalny at this time.
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Blake Fleetwood
Blake Fleetwood was formerly a reporter on the staff of The New York Times and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Village Voice, Atlantic, and the Washington Monthly on a number of issues. He was born in Santiago, Chile and moved to New York City at the age of four. He graduated from Bard College and did graduate work in political science and comparative politics at Columbia University. He has also taught politics at New York University.