Ominous Questions Surround Navalny’s Death

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On April 27th, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation based on as yet unpublished U.S. intelligence community assessments, and anonymous briefings courtesy of “security officials from several European capitals,” which concluded Vladimir Putin neither orchestrated Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s death in prison two months earlier, nor desired for it to happen. This was a belated and confounding intervention in a case that, after an initially intense frenzy of mainstream speculation and accusations, quickly went cold, before vanishing from mainstream consideration entirely.

While exerting little domestic influence outside atypically liberal enclaves in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities, for over a decade prior to his death, Navalny was the US and Europe’s most cherished and prominent Putin detractor by some margin. His every publicity stunt garnered universal media attention, the regular publications of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) on state official embezzlement and grift in Russia invariably broke the internet. Western human rights awards were routinely forthcoming.

After purportedly being poisoned on an inter-Russian flight by the FSB in August 2020, then recovering in Germany, he made a much-publicized “hero’s return” to Moscow, whereupon he was summarily jailed. Despite giving regular interviews to the Western media from prison, and testifying to the rotten conditions in which he was held, Navalny had largely faded from public consciousness by the time news of his death broke on February 16th.

Immediately, the entire Western political, media, and pundit sphere was apoplectic. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death!” US President Joe Biden forcefully declared. Meanwhile, Navalny’s widow Yulia accused Russian authorities of “hiding his body”, as they were “waiting for the traces of yet another of Putin’s novichoks to disappear”:

“My husband could not be broken. And that’s exactly why Putin killed him. Shameful, cowardly, not daring to look into his eyes or simply say his name. We will tell you about it soon. We will definitely find out who exactly carried out this crime and how exactly. We will name the names and show the faces.”

Yet, on February 26th, Ukrainian military chief Kyrylo Budanov “disappointed” everyone by announcing Navalny in fact died as a result of simple health complications - namely, a blood clot. The U.S. intelligence assessments cited by the Wall Street Journal, based on “some classified intelligence, and an analysis of public facts,” reportedly draw the same conclusion. Quite why this apparent confirmation took so long to surface isn’t clear, although it delivered a coup de grâce to any and all suggestions Navalny was deliberately assassinated.

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, Western spying agencies, and officials in Kiev, have relentlessly spewed oft-intelligence insulting, illogical black propaganda about the proxy conflict. We must ask ourselves why the same sources that would have us believe Russian forces were at one point fighting with shovels, and Moscow blew up its own Nord Stream 2 pipeline, seek to shut down suggestions Navalny was murdered.

‘Cataclysmic Loss’

Budanov’s declaration decisively shunted Navalny’s demise from international headlines. Such is the pace with which events move these days, it is perhaps forgotten that immediately following February 16th, there was a concerted campaign by highly influential Western anti-Russian actors for the EU and US to adopt a “Navalny Act”. Under its auspices, the approximately $300 billion Russian assets frozen by Western financial institutions in the wake of Moscow’s invasion would be seized, and given to Ukraine.

At the forefront of this effort was billionaire Bill Browder, an investment manager who reaped untold sums from privatization and asset stripping in Russia during the 1990s, then supported Putin’s rise to power, before being turfed from the country in 2005 on national security grounds. Since, he has transformed himself into the Kremlin’s most pugnacious overseas critic, and an “anti-corruption” campaigner, despite giving up his US citizenship to avoid tax. Speaking to UnHerd February 20th, Browder talked a big game indeed:

“Now is the moment…Putin is willing to lose one million men, but to lose $300 billion would be a cataclysmic loss. All world leaders are looking for a way to hit Putin back for this murder. I’ve been working on confiscating these assets for the last two years, and the Navalny murder is the impetus to get it done.”

Browder had good reason to believe this campaign would bear fruit. For almost 15 years, he has travelled the world telling journalists, lawmakers, and human rights organisations a shocking story of corruption, fraud, and murder at the highest levels of the Kremlin. In brief, he claims local officials forcibly seized the Russian division of his company, Hermitage Capital Management, to carry out a massive tax scam, reaping $230 million in the process. 

According to Browder’s narrative, he then set his “friend” Magnitsky, a gifted lawyer, on the case to determine what had happened. The diligent sleuth duly uncovered the fraud and alerted authorities, but ended up jailed on bogus charges for his courageous whistleblowing. He was then viciously tortured in prison in an attempt to make him retract his testimony, before being beaten to death by guards for refusing.

Sergei Magnitsky’s funeral. He shows no signs of having been beaten to death, as Bill Browder claims.

Typically, Browder’s audiences have been highly receptive. Over the years, his story has been immortalised in multiple articles, books, official reports and documentaries, and influenced legislation and prosecutions in numerous countries. Every member of the “Five Eyes” global spying network, and the EU, has been successfully lobbied to adopt a “Magnitsky Act”, which sanctions government officials overseas - particularly in Russia - for purported human rights abuses.

‘A Hostage’

In reality, the entire Magnitsky fable is a tangled web of lies, fabrications, distortions, exaggerations, and libel. From the very moment Browder started spinning this deceptive yarn, sufficient open source, public domain evidence was available to comprehensively disprove its every aspect. Yet, it took a decade for mainstream journalists to conduct serious due-diligence on his assertions. In November 2019, leading German news outlet Der Spiegel published a comprehensive demolition job, savagely indicting Browder’s probity and integrity in the process.

In the publication’s own words, the fraudster “has a talent for selling a set of facts so it supports his own version of events.” Magnitsky was in fact neither a lawyer nor a whistleblower. He was a crooked accountant who had abetted Browder’s fraudulent financial dealings in Russia, and was justly imprisoned for these activities. This was confirmed by a damning ruling in August that year by the European Court of Human Rights, in a case brought by Browder and Magnitsky’s family.

While the ECHR ordered Moscow to pay Magnitsky’s relatives $37,500 due to a failure to protect his life and health, having identified shortcomings in the medical treatment he was provided in prison, no mention of murder, or unlawful killing, was made in the judgement. Conversely, the court rejected suggestions his arrest and subsequent detention were “manifestly ill-founded,” or that “authorities had…acted with bad faith or deception”:

“The Court reiterated the general principles on arbitrary detention…It found no such elements in this case. The decision to arrest him had only been made after investigators learned he’d previously applied for a UK visa, booked tickets to Kiev, and hadn’t been residing at his registered address. Furthermore, the evidence against him, including witness testimony, had been enough to satisfy an objective observer that he might have committed the offence in question.”

Elsewhere, Der Spiegel’s investigation contained a striking passage, the obvious import of which was bizarrely unexplored. In it, Zoya Svetova, a Moscow-based human-rights activist who investigated Magnitsky’s death in 2009, said:

“What sense would it make to murder him? Magnitsky did not reveal any secret. They wanted testimonies against Browder. That was the motivation. He should have accused Browder of not paying taxes. Magnitsky was a hostage. He himself was of no interest to them. They wanted Browder.”

In other words, it was Browder who benefited from Magnitsky’s death, not Russian authorities. Which raises the grave prospect that the “anti-corruption” campaigner himself was one way or another responsible for his accountant’s tragic passing. This reading is amply reinforced by the sworn deposition of Russian opposition activist Oleg Lurie, in a failed legal case brought by US authorities against Russian-owned company Prevezon, based on Browder’s false claims the firm’s owners were beneficiaries of the $230 million fraud.

Lurie was concurrently incarcerated in the same prison as Magnitsky, and the pair crossed paths twice. The first time, the accountant was in a “happy mood”, boasting of being held in a “big special block” for “white crime inmates”, where cells had “plasma TV sets, refrigerators, kettles” and illegally-installed telephones. The reason for his buoyancy, Magnitsky explained to Lurie, was his Western employers would “save him…they would take him out of there” in a matter of days. 

As Browder et al wished for Magnitsky to “keep silence about their actions”, and his own crime was “not serious”, he seemed assured freedom was impending. Lurie warned him, “his attorneys and people who claim to be standing behind him are lying to him,” but the accountant was unconvinced. Fast forward a few weeks though, and they met again. Magnitsky was “a completely different person at that time…a tangle of nerves,” Lurie testified.

Magnitsky revealed the “Western people who stood behind him, deceived him…they demanded [he] sign various documents” completely unrelated to his case, which would’ve implicated him in numerous grave crimes he didn’t knowingly or willingly commit. As a result, “he had a feeling that he would never get out.” Navalny, like Magnitsky, wasn’t leaving prison anytime soon, and almost certainly knew too much. Did his own Western backers similarly consider it necessary to silence him?

It is supremely puzzling Ukrainian officials effectively torpedoed the “Navalny Act”. Kiev has since the start of the proxy conflict implored Western leaders to hand Russia’s frozen assets over to them in service of the country’s reconstruction, and purchase of ever-more weapons and ammunition. The legilsation would’ve precisely delivered on those demands. There was thus no clear need at all for Budanov to electively sabotage the narrative of Navalny as Kremlin murder victim. Quite the reverse.

‘British Spy’

There are also sinister echoes in the sudden mainstream “reverse ferret” on Navalny’s untimely demise with the similarly mysterious and abrupt November 2019 passing of James Lemesurier, longtime British mercenary and military intelligence operative. Immediately following a fatal fall from the window of his lavish Istanbul apartment, Western sources rushed to convict Russia without evidence, claiming his death may have been - or was likely - a targeted assassination. The most prominent was Mark Urban, veteran BBC “defence” editor.

Within hours of Lemesurier’s lethal crash landing, Urban took to Twitter, urging Turkish authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation,” and “ascertain whether there was state involvement.” His misgivings were in part spurred by an “extensive black propaganda campaign by Russian and Assad media and their acolytes” in the months prior. In other words, critical independent reporting raising grave questions about whether Lemesurier’s “White Helmets” truly were the crusading humanitarian group universally portrayed in the mainstream, or something far darker.

More substantively, “a former colleague” - whether of Lemesurier or Urban isn’t clear - told the BBC journeyman, “I know the flat well, [and] it’s not possible to ‘fall’ from that balcony.” They strongly suspected foul play as a result. Seismic stuff, although curiously, these posts were quickly deleted, due to Urban allegedly receiving “new information”. The nature of this “information”, and who supplied it, has never been revealed. But immediately thereafter, the same sources that hitherto cried murder began labelling Lemesurier’s death an unambiguous suicide.

To say the least, Urban is extremely well-connected in the Western military, security, and intelligence sphere, and highly adept at withholding salient facts from public view. In July 2018, he revealed he’d serendipitously spent the previous year interviewing Sergei Skripal, who along with his daughter was purportedly poisoned in the British city of Salisbury, four months earlier. In the intervening time, Urban fronted multiple BBC Newsnight reports about the incident, never mentioning his personal relationship with the GRU defector.

For Urban - once part of the same British Army tank regiment as Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 recruiter, handler, and Salisbury neighbour - to delete these incendiary posts surely required high-level intervention. At the time, as now, blaming Russia and/or Putin for anything and everything - including quite literally the weather - was a thoroughly safe option in the West, without consequences attached. We are thus left to ponder how and why a long-serving, spook-adjacent British state ‘journalist’ was compelled to retract his charges.

Evidently though, Urban’s sources - the “former colleague” who clearly said too much aside - were keen that Lemesurier’s end not be perceived or investigated as murder under any circumstances. A rationale for this may be provided by Turkish media reports in the aftermath. One article revealed James and his wife Emma Winberg, a self-avowed MI6 operative, “fought violently” outside an Istanbul restaurant just before his deadly plunge. Another suggested Lemesurier - a “British spy” - was “likely running away from someone before his death.”

Fast forward to today, and again interested parties are seemingly eager to dismiss suggestions a high profile Western asset’s death result from foul play. In Navalny’s case, as with Lemesurier, those shadowy elements - the Ukrainian government and CIA being just two publicly confirmed so far - had every reason to accuse Moscow of murder. Yet they not only didn’t, but instead went to great lengths to remove any insinuation of deliberate killing from the equation. Make of that what you will.