Last month, Putin called Navalny’s demise “sad” and said he had been ready to hand the jailed politician over to the West in a prisoner exchange provided Navalny never return to Russia. Navalny’s allies said such talks had been under way […] Washington had not absolved the Russian leader of overall responsibility for Navalny’s death however, given the opposition politician had been targeted by Russian authorities for years, jailed on charges the West said were politically motivated, and had been poisoned in 2020 with a nerve agent[, for which Russia also denies responsibility].
Reuters could not independently verify the Journal report, which cited sources as saying the finding had been “broadly accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit.”
I think I’d want an official statement, not an anonymous statement from an unknown source.
The FSB had had the team following him for quite some time. We know from phone call records that those people were communicating with people pretty high up.
If it isn’t reaching Putin, then it’s some very high-ranking people in the his administration independently deciding to knock off his political opponents.
It’s not impossible that they’d do that, but given the domestic political ramifications, I have a hard time believing that they’d want to just do it without checking with Putin, because it could clobber him politically as well.
EDIT: Oh, they’re saying that him dying in prison shortly after being imprisoned rather than his earlier attempted murder by the FSB might not have been directed by Putin. I guess that that’s at least more-plausible. Doesn’t mean that he wasn’t murdered, but I could believe that Putin would have been fine with him just being permanently imprisoned.