The president of the anti-corruption organization founded by Alexei Navalni, María Pevchij, assured this Monday that the Kremlin was negotiating an offer to exchange the dissident for a Russian spy imprisoned in Germany.
“At the beginning of February, Putin was offered the exchange of the Federal Security Service (FSB) agent and murderer Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a sentence for a murder in Berlin, for two American citizens and Alexei Navalny.
They confirmed to me that negotiations were in their final stages on the afternoon of February 15.
On February 16, Alexei was murdered,” said this Monday the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation established by Navalny to investigate the dirty laundry of the Russian Government.
“You can't change anything now, but I want you to understand how psychopathic Putin is.
Here is the story step by step,” Pevchij stated when presenting a video on the organization's YouTube channel, where he describes how his team tried to negotiate Navalny's release from prison for two years.
That negotiation, they say, began when the Kremlin launched the invasion of Ukraine and the opposition's collaborators were aware of the risk he ran in prison.
The Kremlin's supposed objective in evaluating this exchange was to recover one of its agents imprisoned abroad, Vadim Krasikov.
The spy was sentenced to life in prison in Germany in 2021 for the murder of Chechen rebel Tornike Khangoshvili two years earlier.
According to the investigation, the FSB – the Russian intelligence service that is the heir to the KGB – provided false documents to his agent to move freely around Germany.
Krasikov approached the victim on a bicycle in Berlin's Tiergarten park and shot him in broad daylight.
Despite his false papers, he did not manage to escape: German intelligence captured him hours later.
Since Navalny is a Russian citizen and does not have a passport from any other country, his team proposed a humanitarian exchange.
To do this, his entourage not only turned to American and German politicians – the dissident was successfully treated for his Novichok poisoning in 2020 in that European country – but also “to the richest people on this planet who influence those politicians.” and “Putin's cronies.”
Among others, Pevchij has cited Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich who, he maintains, was the one who made the exchange offer to the Russian president.
The opposition group has regretted that the negotiations with the Kremlin, which could have taken “months,” lasted years.
Pevchij has stressed that the American and German officials they addressed “just nodded their heads” without doing “anything.”
According to the version of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the exchange was reactivated in December and was already “in its final stage”, but Putin ended Navalny, they have accused, which put an end to any possible negotiation.
“The Russian negotiators made Putin understand that the only way to get Krasikov was to exchange him for Navalni,” explained the president of the opposition foundation, before imitating what, in her opinion, could have been the Russian president's final order. : “Stop, I will not tolerate Navalni being free.
Since they are willing to trade Krasikov, we just have to get rid of that point in the negotiation.
We will propose another in due course.”
“It is totally illogical, totally irrational.
“It is the behavior of a crazy gangster,” says Pevchij in the video.
According to Navalny's collaborators, the Russian president "hated him so much that he acted to the detriment of himself and his own interests."
The German government has declined to comment on those accusations.
The German newspaper
Bild
published on February 18, two days after Navalny died under strange circumstances, that the dissident “was about to be released” thanks to three-way negotiations between the Russian, German and American authorities.
Putin, for his part, declared in the interview he gave to the controversial presenter Tucker Carlson on February 8 that he was considering exchanging Krasikov for Evan Gershkovich, Moscow correspondent for
The Wall Street Journal,
detained in the spring of 2023 on charges of espionage.
According to other Russian sources, speculation was being made in Moscow that the Kremlin was studying an exchange with dissidents Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilia Yashin, convicted during the war of “high treason” and “discrediting the Russian army,” respectively.
“Public” farewell
Meanwhile, Navalny's associates claim to be preparing a public funeral for the activist in an unspecified location in Russia.
“We are looking for a room for Alexei's public farewell.
Date: at the end of this work week.
If you have a suitable location, contact us,” the activist's spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, wrote on her social networks.
After a bitter tug-of-war of several days that included threats of all kinds from the Kremlin, the mother of Putin's great political enemy, Liudmila Navalnaya, received the mortal remains of her son this weekend.
Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, denied this Monday the accusations against the Kremlin from Navalni's circle and the opponent's mother, who revealed that the authorities were blackmailing her "by doing anything" to her son's body.
“The Kremlin has nothing to do with this.
The Kremlin cannot exert any pressure.
These are clearly absurd statements by his followers.
Almost all of them live abroad and, therefore, these statements should not be taken into account,” Peskov responded.
The question is whether Putin will allow a tribute event that could become the largest demonstration against him in more than two decades in power.
The Russian police have detained more than 400 citizens just for laying flowers in honor of Navalny at various monuments to the victims of political repression.
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