“Make no mistake – Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. Putin is responsible. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin's brutality. No one should be fooled.”
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, President Joe Biden delivered passionate remarks following the reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Describing Navalny's death as “not a surprise” and an “outrage,” the American president made clear his view that “Putin is responsible.”
Lauding Navalny as modern day crusader, Biden said that the fierce Putin critic believed in a Russia free from the corruption that has crippled it. “He knew it was a cause worth fighting for and obviously even dying for,” Biden added.
In June 2021, Biden told reporters that if Navalny ended up dying in prison the consequences would be devastating for Russia. Biden has not publicly specified what those consequences would be, but he said that he warned Putin directly during their 2021 meeting in Geneva.
The New York Times interviewed Mikhail Vinogradov, a Moscow-based political analyst, on the effects of Navalny's death on Putin's Russia:
The circumstances of Mr. Navalny's death are murky. But citing the widespread view that the Kremlin was essentially responsible for Mr. Navalny's death — which President Biden also asserted in comments Friday afternoon — Mr. Vinogradov added that the news could further unsettle Russia's governing class. It could remind them, he said, of the extraordinary lengths the government would go to to silence dissent. Such repression, he said, “is always a bit of an experiment.”
Simmering unease with Mr. Putin's war and his crackdown on the opposition has been visible repeatedly in recent months, even as polls continue to show widespread support for — or at least acceptance of — the Ukraine invasion. There was the surprise popularity of a little-known antiwar candidate for the coming presidential election, and the movement of the wives of mobilized soldiers demanding their husbands' return.
Before that, there was the stunning, 24-hour uprising last summer led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a threat that Mr. Putin apparently addressed, American intelligence agencies assess, by downing the mercenary chief's plane last August. That episode highlighted the potential for bubbling opposition to Mr. Putin to spin out of control at a moment's notice, and the pent-up demand by swaths of the Russian public for a charismatic leader who might represent an alternative.
One key question now is whether the Kremlin follows Mr. Navalny's death with a new round of repression and censorship. Even in death, the political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said on Friday, Mr. Navalny poses a problem for the Kremlin.
The power of Navalny's legacy was evident on X, where a video message from the late reformer, intended as a rallying cry in case of his death, went viral.
When asked on Friday if the U.S. would strengthen sanctions against Russia, Biden said he was “considering a number of options.”
Watch the full remarks below:
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