US Spy Agencies: Putin Likely Didn't Direct Navalny's Death, Deepening the Mystery

[Social Media]

 

The death of Alexei Navalny in February stirred global outrage and intensified tensions between Russia and the West. Amid the swirling speculation surrounding his demise, U.S. intelligence agencies have made a significant determination: Russian President Vladimir Putin probably didn't order Navalny's killing at the Arctic penal colony. However, this finding doesn't absolve Putin of responsibility but instead adds layers of complexity to the circumstances of Navalny's death.

 

The U.S. intelligence assessment, shared by multiple agencies, including the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, suggests that while Putin bears culpability for Navalny's death, he likely didn't orchestrate it at that specific moment. This conclusion challenges the assumption that Navalny's demise was a deliberate act directed by the Kremlin.

 

However, skepticism remains among certain European intelligence agencies, who argue that in Putin's tightly controlled regime, harm to Navalny couldn't have occurred without the president's prior knowledge and approval. President Biden and other world leaders have unequivocally held Putin accountable for Navalny's death, citing the Kremlin's history of targeting the dissident.

 

Navalny's allies reject the notion that Putin was unaware or uninvolved in his death, dismissing the U.S. intelligence assessment as naive. They argue that Putin's personal investment in Navalny's fate makes it improbable that his death was unintended.

 

The U.S. assessment draws from a variety of sources, including classified intelligence and analysis of public information surrounding Navalny's death. However, the exact circumstances of his demise may never be fully established, leaving lingering questions about the Kremlin's involvement.

 

Navalny's death marked the culmination of a Kremlin campaign to eliminate opposition figures within Russia, leaving the country's political landscape significantly altered. As the last prominent opposition leader, Navalny's demise left a void in Russia's political arena.

 

Despite ongoing efforts to unravel the mystery surrounding Navalny's death, concrete answers remain elusive. The complex geopolitical dynamics between Russia and the West continue to shape the narrative, underscoring the enduring mystery surrounding Navalny's tragic end.

 

 

2024-04-29

 

Get our Daily Newsletter - Click HERE to subscribe

[bendejo]

Is this the borne of the influence of the same US presidential candidate that always covers for his pal Putin?

 

[thaibeachlovers]

There's a turn up for the books. Seems that, as usual, the usual suspects were too quick to pass judgement.

I don't know if Putin ordered it or just did a King Henry 2, but if he did he must have know he'd be the obvious suspect. As to whether he cares about that or not is not mine to know.

[Srikcir]

19 hours ago, Social Media said:

Putin probably didn't order Navalny's killing

"probably" is not determinative. That's not a term normally used by US intelligence agencies. When the US intelligence agencies told POTUS Obama of Bin Laden's location in Pakistan, they didn't say "probably" but cited 75% certainty in his location - that's determinative.

19 hours ago, Social Media said:

he likely didn't orchestrate it at that specific moment. 

So it was ordered by Putin but for another specific moment (time and/or date)? So did soviet bureaucracy get ahead of Putin with miscommunication as to when Navalny was to be murdered or that Putin made a last minute decision to delay Navalny's murder and chain of command was late to relay Putin's change?

 

 

[Hakuna Matata]

Death of Aleksei Navalny:  the Brits did it!

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/02/16/death-of-aleksei-navalny-the-brits-did-it/

 

Quote

Death of Aleksei Navalny:  the Brits did it!

 

It is remarkable how an invitation to do a live television interview can change your schedule and concentrate your mind. 

 

This afternoon I got a WhatsApp message from TRT, Turkey’s premier English language international broadcaster with whom I had done several interviews a year ago, followed by many months of silence. That is not unusual. Broadcasters rotate experts in and rotate experts out at their pleasure.

 

The invitation today was to speak about breaking news, the reported death in a remote Yamalo-Nenets prison colony of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny at age 47.  A glance at the latest online edition of The Financial Times confirmed that Navalny had indeed died and set out the comments of leading Western statesmen condemning what they considered to be the latest murder by Vladimir Putin of prominent activists who oppose his rule. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Council President Charles Michel and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were among those who already had spoken before microphones and were reading from the same anti-Putin script.

 

In short, what happened in the West this afternoon was a new campaign to vilify Vladimir Putin on the world stage based on a death which was, if I may quote former British PM Theresa May, ‘highly likely’ to have been perpetrated by British Intelligence for this very purpose.

 

In all of the false flag operations that have been directed by the West against Russia over the past decade or more, I have argued that the old Roman investigative principle of cui bono militated against the Kremlin having been involved in any way.  So it is today:  why would Putin want to murder Navalny, when the man is now largely forgotten within Russia. Navalny is yesterday’s news and his ‘anti-corruption’ campaign is irrelevant to Russians in the midst of an existential struggle with the Collective West that is being fought on the territory of Ukraine?  However, the murder of Navalny clearly serves the interests of that same Collective West as an intended antidote to the major Soft Power coup of the Carlson Tucker interview with Vladimir Putin just a week ago and perhaps even more important, to the follow-up Tucker News Briefs showing his visits to the Kievskaya Metro Station and to an Auchan supermarket in downtown Moscow.  This was not Gilbert Doctorow publishing his travel notes of visits to St Petersburg markets and reaching 10,000 readers; it was Tucker Carlson, with a regular U.S. audience of 40 million or more for his every broadcast, and a peak of one billion views for the recent interview.

 

Let us go beyond the cui bono argumentation to circumstantial evidence that is damning for the Brits. As the Americans like to say, there are ‘fingerprints’ of the Brits all over this death of Navalny.

 

A fair number of the poisonings and other assorted deaths of people who could be said were ‘inconvenient’ to the Kremlin happened in the U.K., after all. That is where Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch who opposed Putin tooth and nail, was ‘suicided’ and it occurred in 2013 at his London estate when it was widely rumored he was looking for forgiveness for his treachery and was preparing to return to Mother Russia with a trove of documents.  Earlier still, the U.K. is where the Berezovsky employee Alexander Litvinenko met his death in 2006 from polonium poisoning in a very British cuppa tea.

 

However, more recently there were incidents in the U.K. which bear directly on the fate of Navalny, and their timing is very relevant. I am thinking about the Novichok poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Skripal in Salisbury at the start of March 2018, ahead of the 18 March presidential elections in Russia that year, when Putin was seeking another term.

 

Hmm.  A terrible attack on a Putin enemy in 2018 just weeks before a Russian presidential election.  Hmm, again: the date of Putin’s next election happens to be 15-17 March.

 

The Skripal poisoning was shouted to the skies by the British political establishment. Can you just imagine, they said, that Putin is carrying out revenge murders on British soil!  Of course, today, everyone has forgotten about the Skripals, who seem somehow to have survived the Novichok attack which is always fatal and to have been given new identities if they were not simply dumped by MI6 into shallow graves somewhere.

 

But the Novichok that the Russians were said to have invented also was in production in a chemical weapons facility located not far from Salisbury.  Another detail that Western media chose to ignore.

 

Novichok just happens to be the poison that was allegedly used against Aleksei Navalny back in August 2020 while he was on the stump in provincial Russia working up the population to oppose the oligarchs and crooks who, he said, were running the country. Like the Skripals, Navalny miraculously survived his poisoning by Novichok. He was flown to Germany, where Angela Merkel extended a warm welcome to him and where, during his months long convalescence he oversaw the production by German crews of faked video exposés showing palaces on the Black Sea that were supposedly built for Putin.

 

Russian doctors at the prison colony were said to have spent half an hour today trying to revive Navalny, but in vain. He is just one more case of collateral damage in the British secret war on Russia

 

Time was, in the days of Tony Blair, we spoke of the British as the ‘lap dogs’ of Bush.  Today it would be more appropriate to say that the British have become the Hound of the Baskervilles, ahead of and likely outside the control of Washington.

 

When the link to my interview with TRT becomes available, I will post it here.

 

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

 

[Hakuna Matata]

 

[bendejo]

Moscow horse droppings.  Some effort should be exerted to learn more about the circumstances of this U.S. intelligence assessment.  The US has pro-Putin elements in Congress, there is no reason to reject the idea that there is also some of this in intelligence.

As Ronald Reagan said "The fish rots from the head down."

 

[CanadaSam]

Following news quite closely, I agree, that Putin did not directly order the poor fellow's demise.

 

Because he was, in fact, rendered totally helpless, languishing in a gulag in the north.

 

Putin did not need the "world condemnation" etc. which inevitably followed.

[retarius]

All these Putin dunnit's are stupid. Why would Putin potentially sabotage his own election right before it when Navalny would have been silenced at any time before or later? The election interference was disproved long ago but Hillary never went to jail. The Skripal's is also nonsense....right before the World Cup in Russia and all the western leaders pulled out? Only a fool would do that and Putin isn't a fool. And now the Skripal's a well and truly silenced, the UK daren't let them out as they will spill the beans to the UK press. Maybe, Starmer will free them and blame it on the Tories.

[billd766]

8 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

There's a turn up for the books. Seems that, as usual, the usual suspects were too quick to pass judgement.

I don't know if Putin ordered it or just did a King Henry 2, but if he did he must have know he'd be the obvious suspect. As to whether he cares about that or not is not mine to know.

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest person?" (spoken aloudⓘ; also expressed as "troublesome priest person" or "meddlesome priest") is a quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170.

 

I suspect that whilst Putin may not have issued a direct order he may have spoken out loud and that would have had the same effect.

[bendejo]

16 hours ago, bendejo said:

As Ronald Reagan said "The fish rots from the head down."

Correction: it wasn't said by him, it was said of him, and of course he didn't like it.  (circa 1988 presidential campaign)