Pevchikh, as well as those close to the Navalny team and Western officials have blamed the opposition leader’s death on Putin, who oversaw a severe crackdown on dissent over his years in power.
Navalny was arrested upon his return to Russia in 2021, five months after being poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent of the Novichok group. Western leaders blamed Russian authorities for the poisoning, while Navalny pointed the finger at the FSB secret service, which acts on Putin’s orders.
“As for Mr. Navalny. Yes, he passed away. This is always a sad event,” Putin said at the press conference Sunday.
Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited by the state-run news agency TASS as saying that Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, had “the opportunity to come to Russia and see her husband, but she chose to stay abroad.”
Any visit to Russia for Navalnaya would been highly risky, given her husband’s defiance of Putin’s autocratic regime.
Navalnaya has now vowed to take up her husband’s mission to topple Putin’s regime.
