A little more than ten years ago, in December 2013, former oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then a symbol of the opposition against Russian President Vladimir Putin, received a presidential pardon and was released after spending a decade in prison. A similar scenario could have been experienced with today’s main Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly in an Arctic prison on February 16. His team announced this Monday that his funeral will be public and will be held this week in Moscow, although they are searching for the location.
At the time of his death, Navalny was about to be released thanks to a prisoner exchange agreement with the United States and Germany, said one of his collaborators, his former right-hand woman María Pévchij, in a video published on YouTube.
Alexei Navalny, who was 47 years old, was going to be part of an exchange in which Russia would receive in exchange a hitman used by the Russian Security Services (FSB) to kill a Chechen dissident in 2019.
“Alexei Navalny could be sitting in this chair right now, precisely today. This is not a figure of speech: it could and should have happened,” Pévchij said.
“Navalni should have been released in the next few days because we had already obtained a decision on his exchange. In early February, Putin was offered to exchange a shooter, FSB officer Vadim Krasikov, in prison in Berlin for a murder, for two American citizens and Alexéi Navalny,” said the opponent from exile.
He did not specify which American citizens he was referring to. But it could be former Marine Paul Whelan, who is serving 16 years in prison in Russia after being convicted of espionage; The Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, arrested in March 2023 and accused of espionage; or fellow journalist Alsou Kurmasheva, a correspondent for Radio Liberty and a dual Russian-American citizen who has been imprisoned since October under the laws on “foreign agents.”
Pévchij assures in the recording that on February 15, one day before Navalni’s death, they were informed that the negotiations were in their final stage.
Vladimir Putin indicated a few weeks ago in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson that he wanted Krasikov back in Russia.
Vadim Krasikov was found guilty of murdering the Chechen dissident of Georgian nationality, Zelimján Jangoshvili, in the Tiergarten in Berlin, whom he approached on a bicycle on August 23, 2019, and fatally shot him. Arrested moments later after being discovered by passersby, in 2021 he was sentenced to life.
In the interview with Carlson, Putin referred to the hitman as “a man who, for patriotic reasons, liquidated a bandit in one of the European capitals.”
In the video, María Pévchij insisted on the accusations that Navalny’s team has made against Putin in the last week: that it was precisely the head of the Kremlin who ordered Navalny’s murder. The Russian Presidency has repeatedly denied that the Russian State is behind the death of the anti-corruption activist, the main opposition figure to Putin of the last decade in Russia.
He also asserts that in the end this solution could not be reached because Putin himself decided to torpedo the operation. The Russian president could not tolerate the idea that Navalny was free, said the opponent. “Putin was clearly told that the only way to get Krasikov back was to exchange him for Navalny,” Pévchij said. Instead, he decided to “get rid of this bargaining chip” and “offer it to someone else when the time comes.”
Pévchij does not give details of the negotiations or specify who acted as mediators for the Russian opposition, although he assures that they put their lives and careers at risk. On Russia’s part, he does cite the oligarch Roman Abramovich, who would have been involved in some of the conversations with Putin.
From his words a veiled criticism of Western countries emerges. While Navalny’s team made “desperate efforts and tried to find intermediaries, even approaching the late Henry Kissinger,” Western governments did not demonstrate the necessary political zeal to achieve the objective.
“Officials, the United States and Germany, nodded their heads in understanding. They said how important it was to help Navalny and the political prisoners, they shook our hands, they made promises but they did nothing,” Pévchij concluded.
The Russian authorities handed over Navalny’s body to his mother, Ludmila, last Saturday, after claiming it for a week. Previously, she accused investigators of pressuring her to have the opponent buried secretly. Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov denied the accusation on Monday, which he described as “absurd.” According to him, “the Kremlin has nothing to do with this, so it cannot exert pressure.”
The Russian opposition leader’s funeral will be public, his team announced this Monday, and will be held this week in Moscow. But it is not yet known where the funeral chapel will be installed. “We are looking for a space for Alexei’s public farewell at the end of this work week. If you have a convenient location, please contact us,” Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yármish wrote on X (formerly Twitter) to His Followers.
