Basking in poll win, Putin talks about Navalny: ‘I had agreed to prisoner swap’

Commenting on the death of Alexei Navalny for the first time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said early Monday (March 18) that he had supported a suggestion to release the opposition leader in a prisoner exchange just days before his death.

The remarks came at a late-night news conference as results poured in from a presidential election that was certain to extend his rule. Putin’s victory and a fifth term were never in doubt, though, as he faced only token challengers with opposition voices harshly suppressed.

“It happens. There is nothing you can do about it. It’s life,” Putin said of the demise of his biggest foe. As news agency AP reported, the remarks were unusual because Putin repeatedly referred to Navalny by his name for the first time in years.

Allies talked about swap too

Navalny’s allies has also said last month that talks with Russian and Western officials about a prisoner swap involving Navalny were underway. The politician’s longtime associate Maria Pevchikh had said the talks were in their final stages just days before the Kremlin critic’s sudden and unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony.

She accused Putin of “getting rid of” Navalny in order not to exchange him, but offered no evidence to back her claims, and they could not be independently confirmed.

Putin said Monday, also without offering any evidence, that several days before Navalny’s death, “certain colleagues, not from the (presidential) administration” had told him about “an idea to exchange Navalny for certain people held in penitentiary facilities in western countries”.

“Believe it or not, but the person talking to me didn’t even finish their sentence when I said: ‘I agree’,” Putin said in response to a question from a journalist about Navalny’s death. He added that his one condition was that Navalny wouldn’t return to Russia.

“But unfortunately, whatever happened, happened,” Putin said.

87% votes

With about 90 per cent of precincts counted, Putin had some 87 per cent of the votes. Putin hailed the early results as an indication of “trust” and “hope” in him. “Of course, we have lots of tasks ahead. But I want to make it clear for everyone: When we were consolidated, no one has ever managed to frighten us, to suppress our will and our self-conscience. They failed in the past and they will fail in the future,” Putin said at a meeting with volunteers after polls closed.

Despite tight controls, several dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported across the voting period. Several people were arrested, including in Moscow and St Petersburg, after they tried to start fires or set off explosives at polling stations while others were detained for throwing green antiseptic or ink into ballot boxes.

With little margin for protest, Russians crowded outside polling stations at noon Sunday, on the last day of the election, apparently heeding an opposition call to express their displeasure with Putin. Any public criticism of Putin or his war in Ukraine has been stifled. Independent media have been crippled. While Navalny died last month, other critics are either in jail or in exile.

Protest from Opposition

In that tightly controlled environment, Navalny’s associates urged those unhappy with Putin or the war in Ukraine to go to the polls at noon on Sunday — and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that time.

Among those heeding call was Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who joined a long line in Berlin as some in the crowd applauded and chanted her name. She spent more than five hours in the line and told reporters after casting her vote that she wrote her late husband’s name on the ballot.

Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Navalnaya replied: “Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr Putin. There could be no negotiations and nothing with Mr Putin, because he’s a killer, he’s a gangster.”

Navalny’s death

Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known Opposition politician, died last month while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated. His allies, family members and Western officials blamed the death on the Kremlin, accusations it has rejected.

The politician’s associates said officials listed “natural causes” on paperwork Navalny’s mother was shown when she was trying to retrieve his body.

Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow of his own accord after recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He was immediately arrested. The Kremlin has vehemently denied it was behind the poisoning.

Prisoner swap plan

Pevchikh claimed that there was a plan to swap Navalny and two US citizens held in Russia for Vadim Krasikov. He was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing in Berlin of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen descent. German judges said Krasikov acted on the orders of Russian authorities.

She did not identify the US citizens that were supposedly part of the deal. There are several in custody in Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, convicted of espionage and serving a long prison sentence. They and the US government dispute the charges against them.

Putin had earlier said that the Kremlin was open to negotiations on Gershkovich. He pointed to a man imprisoned in a “US-allied country” for “liquidating a bandit” who had allegedly killed Russian soldiers during separatist fighting in Chechnya. Putin didn’t mention names but appeared to refer to Krasikov.

(With agency inputs)