"It’s not ‘Navalny died’, but ‘Putin killed Navalny’,” Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, said.
Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran liberal, said Navalny’s death showed the need for reform and echoed many opposition figures in saying he feared for the health of other activists in jail.
The way that’s worded makes it sound like everyone not in the west must be mentally retarded. Of course Putin did it, you think the guy slipped in the shower? Why was he in prison to begin with huh? Robbing banks?
Yeah… everyone with a basic understanding of the situation holds Putin responsible for Navalny’s unjust execution. Even Putin’s sociopath supporters know he did it, they’re not even really pretending it was accidental.
In this context it just means ‘the outside world.’ It’s a hand-wave for major geopolitical forces besides Russia, China, and occasionally India.
Not that ‘X holds Y accountable’ implies Z does not. When someone says they love waffles, that doesn’t mean they hate pancakes.
Well no shit. If the state wasn’t directly responsible, day-of - and they might be - then his death was caused by a decade of abuse intended to kill him or break him.
They tried charging him with failure to appear in court… while he was in a coma… that they caused. Anything short of a lightning strike might as well be a smoking gun.