Editor’s take: Putin killed Navalny on second attempt

If anyone had any hesitation about whether Russia was a ‘demokratura’ or a totalitarian regime, the answer today – following the death in prison of opposition leader Alexei Navalny – is clear.

Putin killed Navalny, his most prominent opponent, on the second attempt.

He first tried to poison him with Novichok, but Navalny survived and, even more unexpectedly, returned to Russia after treatment in Germany, knowing he would be sent to jail.

Navalny probably knew he had no choice if he wanted to remain credible as an opponent to Putin.

Critics of the regime who live abroad mean nothing in Russia – exiled businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky is probably the best example.

And Navalny probably knew he was dying under the terrible conditions of his detention. His way of triumphing over the dictator was by laughing each time he had the chance to appear in front of a camera. He is going to be remembered smiling.

With Navalny being moved from jail to jail until his final destination, the Polar Wolf prison in the Arctic, the world discovered that the Gulag didn’t disappear after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Even Leonid Brezhnev didn’t kill people that way – and I remember Brezhnev’s times.

But Putin’s role model is not Brezhnev, it’s Stalin.

Putin has rehabilitated Stalin, and the entire Russian propaganda machine is employed to glorify the dictator responsible for the death of one million people during the infamous repressions. One of the brightest members of my family was killed by Stalin in 1937, and my father learned about his fate only 30 years later.

Now we understand better why Putin didn’t allow a mild critic – Boris Nadezdin – to run for president. No critics are allowed in Russia. Period.

And Putin signed a law on Wednesday that will allow authorities to confiscate money, valuables, and other assets from people convicted of spreading “deliberately false information” about the country’s military.

Useful idiots who still believe that Putin has something important to say, like Tucker Carlson, are even more discredited after Navalny’s death, or more precisely, assassination.

“Navalny was finally killed by Putin today”, wrote my distinguished colleague and compatriot Christo Grozev on X, who features prominently in the Oscar-winning ‘Navalny’ documentary.

The best scene in the documentary is when Navalny, pretending to be a Russian official from the secret services, calls one of the agents involved, who takes the bait and describes the poisoning plot in the greatest detail. It was Grozev, the frontman of Bellingcat, who found the agent’s telephone number.

After his amazing scoop, Grozev said he knew he made it onto Putin’s kill list.

But people in more immediate mortal danger include Vladimir Kara-Murza and other political prisoners, whose fate looks much more grim today.

Stalin never stood trial. He was still in power when he died – alone in his dacha, reportedly choking on his own vomit.

Putin should stand trial and be held accountable for the numerous murders he has ordered, including Navalny’s, but also for the despicable war he started in Ukraine. With Putin’s role model, there was never a process of de-Stalinisation. Future Russia will need de-Putinisation.

Navalny kept smiling, I think because he believed that sooner or later, this was going to happen.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]