President Joe Biden addressed the reports that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in prison in remarks at the White House on Friday.
Navalny death comes less than a month before Russia’s election that will give Vladimir Putin six more years of power, and as he served a prison sentence widely viewed as political punishment following a poisoning attempt believed to have been ordered by the Russian government. Supporters of Navalny and western officials are calling Kremlin critic’s death a political assassination.
“Like millions of people around the world, I’m literally both not surprised and outraged by the news,” Biden told the press gathered in the Roosevelt Room.
“He bravely stood up to the corruption, the violence, and all the bad things that the Putin government was doing. In response, Putin had him poisoned, he had him arrested, he had him prosecuted for fabricated crimes, he sentenced him to prison, he was held in isolation. Even all that didn’t stop him from calling out Putin’s lies. Even in prison, he was a powerful voice for the truth, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. And he could have lived safely in exile after the assassination attempt on him in 2020 — which nearly killed him, I might add,” the president continued. “Instead, he returned to Russia, knowing he’d likely be imprisoned or even killed if he continued his work. But he did it anyway, because he believed so deeply in his country, in Russia.”
Biden added that if the reports of Navalny’s death are true — “and I have no reason to believe they’re not” — Russian authorities “are going to tell their own story.”
“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” the president said. “Putin is responsible.”
