OPINION: Navalny’s Murder: Responding to the Killers in the Kremlin

So, the latest victim of the cold-blooded tyrant and his entourage in the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny, has suddenly “died” in a remote Russian prison.

No need to pull the wool over our eyes. We all understand that Russia’s most prominent political prisoner was killed by the Putin regime.

Whether one liked, or trusted, Navalny, and many Ukrainians certainly had their doubts about him and his vision of Russia, that is not what matters now.

His death is yet another unmistakable and gruesome manifestation of the cold-blooded and dangerous nature of the regime holding power in Moscow and political sway over the still largely docile and imperialistically-minded Russian population and the world’s gullible or overtly anti-Western states, and brazenly challenging the democratic world on all fronts, openly, and esecially by underhand means.

Navalny,was indeed a courageous hero by daring to return to Russia, even at the risk of his own life. Remember the failed attempt in 2020 to poison him in the tradition of Putin’s preferred method of silencing his opponents once and for all.

He showed a year later that he was ready take the political fight back into Russia and present himself as an alternative to the killers in the Kremlin. For this he deserves our recognition.

Navalny may have miscalculated, for the Russian masses, zombified by the Kremlin’s propagandists, did not rally to his side. But his Quixotic attempt to call Russians to their senses, will be remembered in years to come.

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Navalny's death, or rather murder, was announced just as the leaders of Russia's democratic opposition in exile were gathering in Vilnius for their latest meeting to further refine their strategy.

It also occurred just as Germany signed an agreement providing Ukraine with security guarantees. And as we know, Navalny was no stranger to Germany and it's from there that he left on his last and fateful journey into Putin’s lion’s den – Russia’s house of horrors.

The murder of the Russian oppositionist leader also coincided with the latest Munich Security Conference at which support for Ukraine and discussion about its future within Euro-Atlantic structures will be among the main topics on the agenda.

And all this as critical battles are going on: in eastern Ukraine in the strategically important town of Avdiivka, which Russia is trying to capture to at least have something to show for all its costly efforts on the frontline as the second anniversary of its war against Ukraine looms; and, on the eve of Russia’s phony presidential election next month in which all rivals to tsar Putin have been eliminated or blocked, to demonstrate that no internal dissent will be tolerated.

In short, Putin and his cronies are continuing to send mixed signals hoping to confuse or debilitate the West. On the one hand, they are pushing the idea of a ceasefire on Russia's terms, that is, with it retaining control over some 20 percent of Ukraine's territory and the West forced to accept the belligerent anti-Western country and its aggressive imperialism as a new normal feature of the international set up; and, on the other, insisting that they will not stop until Ukraine is subdued, if not destroyed, and the West accepts this.

Meanwhile, zero tolerance of dissent within Russia itself.  Its citizens are to remain as mere serfs expected to serve their Kremlin lords without questioning, and as cannon fodder to feed grandiose if atavistic, imperialistic, self-serving, ambitions. 

Navalny’s murder is another stark reminder of who Ukraine and the West are up against. Just as Hitler and his expansionist-minded genocidal Nazi followers were not allowed to get away with redefining the world as per their brutal ideological precepts, so Putin and his latter-day Russian fascist adulators must not be allowed to win and impose a new perverse, anti-democratic, world order on us.

Goerge Orwell – I’m sure you’re with us.