Russian leader accused of ordering Navalny’s death to stop him being exchanged for FSB hitman serving life sentence in Germany
Alexei Navalny’s allies have alleged that Vladimir Putin had the opposition leader killed in jail to sabotage a prisoner swap in which Navalny would have been exchanged for a convicted hitman jailed in Germany.
Maria Pevchikh, a close ally of the opposition leader, said in a video that Navalny and two US nationals were in line to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB security service hitman who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a Chechen former separatist in Berlin.
“Navalny should have been free in the next few days because we had secured a decision to exchange him,” Pevchikh said. “I received confirmation that the negotiations were at their final stage on the evening of 15 February.” Navalny was reported dead on 16 February.
Why did Putin even allow those talks to happen in the first place?
He might have wanted to exchange just these 2 US nationals for Changoschwili’s murderer and made it seem as if he would exchange Navalny as well to make the deal more appealing to the German government.
That is the only way it would make sense to me. Hoping they would trade anyway.