Wall Street Journal, 4/27/24

U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Putin likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed at the notoriously brutal prison camp in February, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that deepens the mystery about the circumstances of his death.

“Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said after the world learned of the death.

But the U.S. now believes the timing of his demise wasn’t intended by Putin.

Full article here.

US Spy Agencies Surprisingly Concluded That Putin Didn’t Order Navalny’s Death

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 4/28/24

The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed people familiar with the matter to report that the CIA, the National Directorate of Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit, among other US spy agencies, concluded that President Putin didn’t order Navalny’s death earlier this year. They still believe that he’s culpable since the US’ view is that he was wrongly imprisoned and lacked adequate medical care, but this disclosure still throws a wrench in the West’s information warfare operations.

Objective observers were already aware that “Putin Had No Reason To Kill Navalny But The West Has Every Reason To Lie That He Did”, with the first being due to the fact that he posed no threat to the Russian leader from behind bars while the second was attributable to their interest in smearing him. The West also wanted to reduce turnout during March’s presidential elections and pressure Congress into breaking its deadlock on Ukraine aid. Now that neither is relevant anymore, the truth is coming out. [https://korybko.substack.com/p/putin-had-no-reason-to-kill-navalny]

President Putin revealed during his re-election speech that he had actually approved swapping Navalny for unnamed Russian prisoners being held by the West before that convicted non-systemic opposition leader’s untimely demise that Ukrainian military-intelligence chief Budanov blamed on a blood clot. Even so, many anti-Russian activists in the West refused to believe either of those two, and this was in spite of them previously treating the latter’s words as gospel.

It remains unclear why US spy agencies reportedly concluded that the Russian leader didn’t order Navalny’s death despite being in positions of authority to launder this lie for easy soft power points against his country. One possible reason is that his public confirmation that he was about to be swapped made it difficult for them to cling to that story since it truly doesn’t make sense why President Putin would approve of that only to then turn around and kill him.

In other words, they couldn’t lend false credence to the initial narrative that he was responsible if they wanted to retain a semblance of credibility, though the consequence of doing so was that Biden was made to look like a fool after their boss claimed that “Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.” Everyone interpreted that to mean that he ordered it, but their new caveat appears to be that he created the conditions for him to pass away prematurely from a medical issue, thus helping Biden “save face” a bit.

Nevertheless, many anti-Russian activists still can’t accept those spy agencies’ reported conclusion since it contradicts their secular cult’s dogma, namely that President Putin is personally responsible for every bad thing that happens to any non-systemic opposition member. It’s a matter of faith for them to believe this since failing to do so could lead to the unraveling of their entire movement. They therefore delusionally insist that they know him better than the entire American Intelligence Community does.

As two cases in point, the Wall Street Journal cited Russian-designated foreign agent Leonid Volkov (a member of the non-systemic opposition) and Polish think tank expert Slawomir Debski, who both claimed that Navalny was killed at President Putin’s orders or at least with his tacit approval in advance. By divorcing themselves more and more from reality, they’re further discrediting the West’s information warfare operations, which works to Russia’s cynical benefit in the soft power sense.