C’est la vie 18.03.2024

"Well, it happens, nothing can be done about it. Such is life."
(c) Vladimir Putin on the death of Alexey Navalny.

Yesterday, immediately after his triumphant election as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin blatantly admitted that he "took care" of Alexey Navalny. "Such is life," Vladimir Putin stated. Putin also confirmed the fact of negotiations about an exchange. Here is the full quote:

"By the way, I'll tell you, this will be unexpected — a few days before Mr. Navalny's departure from life, some colleagues, not administration employees, some people told me that there was an idea to exchange Mr. Navalny for some people who are in detention in Western countries. You may believe me or not... The person who was speaking to me hadn’t even finished the sentence when I said — I agree."

It is already known that "some colleagues, not administration employees" refers to Roman Abramovich. Also, at least to me, it is known that: "Putin always destroys those he considers dangerous. He considered Navalny to be such a threat." There could never have been any exchange, a priori. And this is actually very scary information and now I will tell you why. But first, a bit of history.

Alexey Navalny became dangerous to Vladimir Putin in 2020, after his poisoning. This attracted worldwide attention, and Navalny, from being a blogger-investigator (often not shying away from blatant "custom orders" in the interests of the same Russian special services, facts of which I have), turned into an independent political figure. The subsequent protest actions across Russia in support of Alexey Navalny, as well as a series of his films with quite serious revelations about both Vladimir Putin himself and his entourage, as well as uncovering the facts of Navalny's poisoning in August 2020, so to speak, caused such an information tsunami wave, that Navalny should have seriously started worrying about his safety. For Putin, he then turned from a blogger into enemy No. 1. And Putin's enemies, as a rule, do not live long.

So what does Alexey Navalny do? He, along with Yulia Navalnaya, boards a plane on January 17, 2021, and returns to Russia, where he was quite naturally detained at passport control in Sheremetyevo.

That is, a person who became enemy number one to Vladimir Putin decides not to fight Putin from immigration, which would have been logical; but returns to Russia, where he had already been tried to be fatally poisoned by special services. And NO ONE, damn it, NO ONE stops him, does not tell him: "What the fuck are you trying to pull off?!" and so on in the same spirit. It seems, on the contrary, that someone was deliberately pushing him towards this. Moreover, this "someone" was from Alexey Navalny's closest circle.

What happens next? Next, of course, Navalny goes to prison. First, Alexey Navalny received a real sentence of 2 years and 8 months instead of a suspended sentence in the "Yves Rocher" case. And in 2023, Navalny received 19 years in a special regime colony on charges of extremism. Alexey Navalny commented on this at the time: "19 years in a special regime colony. The number doesn't matter. I understand perfectly well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of this regime."

That is, both Navalny himself and all thinking people were aware that Putin would never let Navalny go alive. And would simply mock his enemy, as is characteristic of people with serious psychological deviations. Indeed, this was the case until at some point "someone" again initiated the exchange of Alexey Navalny.

Serious discussion of exchanging Alexey Navalny is equivalent to provoking the extrajudicial execution of Alexey Navalny, which those who initiated it could not have been unaware of. Indeed, this is what happened on February 16 this year. In the colony in Harp, all cameras were suddenly turned off. After that, no one ever saw Alexey Navalny alive again. And now Putin is openly mocking everyone, claiming that, after all, I was just ahead of everyone with the initiative to exchange Navalny, just so he would no longer appear in Russia; and he just died. Such is life...

But who is this "someone" who prompted Roman Abramovich to pass on the initiative to start negotiations on the exchange of Alexey Navalny and thus provoked his extrajudicial execution? Who is this "someone" who pushed Alexey Navalny to return to Russia in January 2021? Maybe this "someone" is the same person who, in essence, achieved a complete triumphant legitimization of Vladimir Putin's election over the past weekend through the "Noon FOR Putin" project?

So many questions and so few answers. C'est la vie!

Dmitrii Ershov, political scientist.