The death of Alexey Navalny in a Siberian prison on 16 February 2024 has been met with ghoulish glee by western news outlets. It’s an unmissable opportunity for an orgy of hypocrisy, sanctimony and demonisation of the Big Bad Bear.
Navalny was just the kind of Russian politician that the West loved. He had all the right opinions. He was against Russian involvement in Syria (how dare Russia defend Syria’s legitimate government against Islamic extremists sponsored by us). He criticised the invasion of Ukraine. He was in favour of gay marriage. And most importantly, he was anti-Putin.
We will skip lightly over his past as a racist nationalist. To us he was a born again liberal, the kind of leader those stubborn Russians should have elected.
So let’s examine some possible explanations of his untimely death.
Natural Causes
It’s possible his death was due to natural causes. People do die suddenly and unexpectedly, and perhaps the harsh prison conditions contributed to this.
But you don’t want to hear that, so let’s move on to something much more to your taste…
Putin Did It
So what’s the evidence that Putin did it? Well, Putin’s responsible for everything bad that happens in the world, isn’t he? Putin wanted Navalny dead because he hates our freedoms, and that’s how those sinister Russkies operate.
And of course Navalny had been poisoned before in 2020 and was taken to Germany, where he recovered. Those evil commies put the Novichok in his tea at the airport. Or it was in a bottle of water he had with him? Or it was in his underpants…. The story kept changing, but nevertheless, it must have been Putin.
And don’t forget all those Russian oligarchs and double agents who had a habit of dying mysteriously on British soil. Gosh those Russian tentacles get everywhere.
Putin had the motive. He was scared, you see. Scared that one day Navalny would topple him from power and usher in a rainbow hued neoliberal utopia in backwards benighted Russia.
But here are some niggling doubts you might like to ignore.
Navalny was in prison on corruption charges. He was no threat to Putin. Navalny’s popularity among Russians was very low. The West may have loved him, but to most Russians, Western liberalism is associated with the corruption, poverty, humiliation and despair of Russia in the 1990s when we gave them the gift of gangster capitalism.
Navalny was not the opposition in Russia. The opposition in Russia is provided by the Communist Party, and right wing nationalists.
In fact, Navalny’s death is inconvenient to Putin, occurring shortly before the presidential elections. Why would Putin do something that would make himself and Russia look bad when there was no reason to?
So here’s another possibility to consider: you did it.
You did it
Not you personally. I mean us. The United Kingdom.
This argument was put forward by Belgian analyst and Russia expert Gilbert Doctorow. Let’s examine the evidence.
First, let’s put on our conspiracy theory hats and ask who benefits – cui bono?
Well, it’s certainly not Putin. It’s an embarrassment in front of the world just before the presidential elections, and it allows plenty of hysterical media content for Russia’s Western enemies.
Furthermore, Navalny’s death serves as a convenient distraction from events that it’s very important that you ignore.
One of these is Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson. Whatever you think of Putin’s historical analysis, he was cogent, logical and clear, while the leader of the free world confuses Mexico with Egypt and struggles with the stairs. Weren’t we told Putin was dying? Or was he mad, I don’t remember? Either way, the interview was a rare soft power win for Russia. That can’t be allowed to stand.
On top of that, there is the slow motion catastrophic defeat of Ukraine reflected in the disastrous loss of Avdeevka to the Russians – a major victory which will no doubt soon be relegated to a mere symbolic win for Russia. Funny, I thought Ukraine was winning.
Navalny’s demise was also a rather convenient gift for the Americans trying to ratify sending billions more to support our unhinged proxy war against Russia – after all, Ukraine’s defeat will be embarrassing for the Democrats as well as for the other leaders of the Western world who’ve bet the farm on Ukraine being victorious.
But of course, we’re British and would never do anything so underhand and devious as to assassinate someone in another country.
I mean, we have helped Ukrainians blow up stuff in Russia with long range missiles, destroying infrastructure and killing civilians. But they were only Russians. Not good Russians like Navalny.
And, yes, of course when Russia and Ukraine agreed a tentative peace deal in the early weeks of the war, Boris Johnson flew to Ukraine and sabotaged it. We won’t support a peace deal, the loveable clown said, so keep fighting. Trust us. Russia’s weak. You’ll get Crimea back and everyone will live happily ever after.
The fact that Britain (no doubt our peckers in the pockets of American neocons) stopped peace in its tracks and kept the war going was attested to by Ukrainian negotiators. I don’t mean Denys Kireyev (he’s the Ukrainian negotiator who was assassinated by the Ukrainian security services… best just ignore him – remember, only Russia does stuff like that).
No, I mean Davyd Arakhamia from Zelensky’s own party who confirmed that Russia wanted to end the war if Ukraine agreed neutrality and to not join NATO. The West prevented the peace deal from being implemented. Hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been avoided.
But I guess it was worth it. For NATO. And freedom.
Boris denies all this. And you probably believe him. He wouldn’t lie, would he?
But we are at war with Russia, so why wouldn’t we want to make Putin look bad, draw attention away from our catastrophic foreign policy defeats and ramp up the Russophobic hysteria necessary to keep sending Ukraine bombs and treasure. No peace negotiations – how can we negotiate with that man?
Hate Putin like you’re told to.
Russia’s different, you see. Barbaric. Autocratic. Devious. In any case, these are the Russophobic tropes that have long been fed to the Western public. Look up some old newspapers from the mid-nineteenth century in the build up to the Crimean War. The same elite anti-Russian hysteria swept the political and media class.
We’re better than them, you see. Of course, American journalist Gonzalo Lira was arrested and tortured with toothpicks in the eye in a Ukrainian prison after his reports criticising Zelensky’s government. He later died in prison. Naturally, of course. He was probably a Russian spy. And right wing. He deserved it. Even if he was tortured to death in a Ukrainian prison, it’s totally different from Navalny’s case. Russians only kill good people. In any case, it’s probably better to ignore this.
It’s probably also better to ignore Julian Assange too. He’s facing a 175 year jail sentence for exposing American war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Completely different to Navalny’s case. Only Russians do bad stuff because they’re uniquely evil. Remember that.
In the final analysis, the evidence that the UK was responsible for Navalny’s death is circumstantial. But so is the evidence that Big Bad Vlad did it. It would have been easy for Russia to do it, but hard for the UK, although close connections between our security service and Ukrainian saboteurs operating on Russian soil would make it possible. On the other hand, it would make no sense for Putin to do it, but it would make sense for us to do it. We’re not called perfidious Albion for nothing.
So who knows. We’ll probably never find out what really happened to Navalny. Something that doesn’t seem to be much considered is the number of enemies Navalny made during his anti-corruption campaigns. These would certainly have the motive for some vengeance.
But look on the bright side. It gives our vacuous elites a perfect excuse for moral grandstanding, relentless demonisation of Putin and tedious recycling of the standard Russophic tropes that have gripped the West periodically ever since the Great Schism of a thousand years ago when the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches went their separate ways.
They’re barbarians, devious, anti-democratic. Almost makes you want to go to war with them, doesn’t it?
For more on hysterical Russophobia, see here:
Paul Weatherhead 