The Intelligence agencies of the United States Government came to the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably” did not order the death of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, according to US media reported on Saturday.
US officials, however, have not been able to clarify the cause of Navalny’s death last February, the media reported.
In a report that, according to The Wall Street Journal, has been distributed in several US Government agencies, Putin is not exempt from guilt, but it is stated that he was not the one who directly ordered the end of life. of the opponent.
President Joe Biden held Putin directly responsible for Navalny’s death and his government imposed several sanctions on Russia in retaliation for it.
The president was asked in a press conference if he thought that the death of the Russian opponent was a “murder”, to which he responded: “We do not know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that Navalni’s death is a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
According to the Russian penitentiary services, Navalny, 47, died after feeling unwell after taking a walk in the prison where he was being held and, although the medical services tried to revive him “for more than half an hour”, he ended up losing his life.
In December last year, Navalny was transferred from a prison in the Vladimir region, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, to a prison in Jarp, in the Arctic Circle, near the Ural mountain range.
Navalny had survived an attempted poisoning with the chemical agent Novichok in 2020 and his health had been a cause of growing concern after he declared a hunger strike between March and April 2021, weeks in which he lost a lot of weight.
Navalny’s death continues to shake Russia. Russian journalist and cameraman Sergei Karelin was arrested this Sunday for collaborating with the late opposition leader’s social networks, according to the Associated Press (AP). He is the second Russian informant arrested for this reason in the last 24 hours.
“AP is very concerned about the arrest of video journalist Sergei Karelin,” said the US news agency, indicating that he will soon be brought before a court, without specifying which one.
The journalist, who has dual citizenship with Israel, “was detained on Friday night in the Murmansk region of northern Russia,” according to the agency.
On Saturday, a Moscow court ordered the arrest of Konstantin Gabov, a producer for the Reuters news agency, accusing him of extremist activities for participating in the preparation of photos and video material for publications on the ‘NavalniLIVE’ YouTube channel.
This channel was created by the opposition’s collaborators, who also founded the Anti-Corruption Fund, declared extremist in this country.
A week ago, for the same reason, the collaborator of the Sota Vision channel, Antonina Favórskaya, was arrested.
Recently, the journalist from the Russian edition of ‘Forbes’ magazine Sergei Mingázov was arrested on charges of spreading “fake news” on Telegram about the actions of the Russian Army in Ukraine.
Hundreds of independent Russian media have had to close and their journalists go into exile abroad since the start of the war in Ukraine.
