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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/18/its-starting-to-get-dark-after-navalnys-death-many-fear-what-putin-will-do-next>
"Vladimir Putin smiled and looked unusually festive on Friday as he praised
factory workers and joked with state reporters at an industrial plant in the
Ural city of Chelyabinsk.
Putin’s confidence was unmistakable – a sign of his full belief that he would
get away with the death that day of his biggest critic in jail while outlasting
Ukraine on the battlefield.
The world might never know what specifically happened on the day of Alexei
Navalny’s death at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle. As of Sunday, his
family has not yet even been allowed to see his body.
Navalny spent years enduring some of the worst excesses of the Russian prison
system. The country’s penal colonies are notorious for their grim conditions
and the opposition leader was singled out for particularly cruel treatment.
Whatever the circumstances of his death, years of mistreatment support the
widespread view held by his supporters that the Kremlin was responsible.
“Putin killed Alexei Navalny,” said Georgy Alburov, a Navalny ally and a
researcher for his Anti-Corruption Foundation. “How exactly he did it will
certainly be exposed.”
Leaders across the west similarly echoed Alburov’s view, laying the blame for
Navalny’s death directly at the feet of Putin. “Make no mistake: Putin is
responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible,” said the US president,
Joe Biden.
But these statements are likely to leave the Kremlin shrugging its shoulders at
best.
Already a wanted man after the international criminal court ruling charging him
with overseeing the abduction of Ukrainians, Putin has long stopped seeking the
approval of the west. As the Kremlin sees it, Putin is in the driving seat."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
