US officials said there had been no discussions between Russian and the United States over swapping Alexei Navalny with prisoners from the West.
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National Security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters during a White House briefing Monday that US officials had spoken to Russia for “months and years” about releasing American detainees but “have not heard a Russian official raise Navalny as part of a prisoner swap in any of these conversations”.
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.
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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.
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 didn’t 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 U.S. government dispute the charges against them.
Sullivan said Monday the US is in regular communication with senior Russian officials and had made “a series of offers” for the release of the two men. “It remains an utmost priority of ours,” to get the men out of Russia, Sullivan said.
German officials have refused to comment when asked if there had been any effort by Russia to swap Krasikov.
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.
AP
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