Foreign Affairs
Absolving Putin of Navalny’s death could signal an awareness that negotiations in Ukraine must come soon.
Alexei Navalny, his wife Yulia, opposition politician Lyubov Sobol, and other demonstrators march in memory of Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow on February 29, 2020. (Kirill Kudyravtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
In the world of spy vs. spy, things are always murky. The public got a glimpse into that shadowy world last week when anonymous officials from the American intelligence community leaked to the Wall Street Journal the results of their investigation into the death earlier this year of dissident Alexei Navalny. The verdict: Putin did not order Navalny killed.
This is contrary to what President Joe Biden claimed at the time. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” he said. Many commentators leapt to the conclusion that Navalny had been “murdered.”
Skeptical voices were heard early on, including from some unlikely sources. Ukraine’s hardline intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said two weeks after Navalny’s death, “I may disappoint you, but as far as we know, he indeed died as a result of a blood clot. And this has been more or less confirmed.” (Budanov has also said that he thinks Yevgeny Prigozhin might still be alive.)
The Journal story came out just a week after widow Yulia Navalnaya graced the cover of TIME magazine as one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris contributed the blurb for Navalnaya, lauding her as a “courageous fighter” and “a symbol of democratic values.”
The intelligence sources who spoke to the Journal did not offer any bombshell evidence or any alternative explanation for Navalny’s death. The reasoning behind the new assessment, as far as it has been disclosed, is mostly based on logic that people like yours truly offered back in February: Putin did not stand to gain much by Navalny’s death; he risked losing a valuable piece of leverage; the timing on the eve of the Munich Security Conference could not have been worse for Putin.
So why did our intelligence community leak this now? On the surface, there seems to be little reason to do so. Rallying support for the war in Ukraine depends on painting Putin as a cold-blooded murderer, the kind of person who would order the death of a dissident. Yulia Navalnaya’s future as the standard-bearer for her husband’s cause depends on her status as the widow of a martyr. Even if our government did conclude that Putin did not order Navalny killed, why not keep that conclusion to themselves?
The explanation may lie in Ukraine’s worsening battlefield position. The Russian line is advancing and Ukraine’s forces are unlikely to be able to turn the tide even with a new infusion of Western arms. The time for negotiating an end to this war may be approaching.