Officials say while Putin retains culpability for the death of his biggest critic, he probably did not want it to happen when it did.
Intelligence officials in the United States have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin probably did not plan for jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny to be killed in February at an Arctic prison camp, according to US media reports.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter that it did not name, reported that US intelligence agencies did not dispute Putin’s culpability in Navalny’s death, but had concluded that the Russian President probably did not order Navalny’s death at the time it took place.
The finding was “broadly accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit”, the Journal cited its sources as saying on Saturday.
The Associated Press news agency, citing a US official, reported separately that the intelligence community had found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny’s death or directly ordered it.