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Alexei Navalny (2021 at a court hearing in Moscow)

Photo: Moscow City Court / AP / dpa

According to his anti-corruption foundation, the federal government and the USA wanted to get Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny out of prison shortly before his death in the form of a prisoner exchange.

Accordingly, the so-called Tiergarten murderer Vadim Krasikov should be transferred to Russia and Navalny to the West as part of a larger exchange.

The head of the Navalny Foundation, Maria Pevchik, said in a video published on the YouTube platform on Monday that she had been informed the day before Navalny's death on February 16 that relevant negotiations were on the home stretch.

Pevchik indicated that a similar offer had recently been made to the Kremlin via Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

She received no confirmation or denial from Abramovich.

The video also states that discussions on the topic have been going on between the Navalny team, the federal government and the USA for two years.

A plan was ready in the spring of last year.

But he was repeatedly thwarted.

"It could have happened faster," said Pevchik, "with political will it would have been a matter of months, not years."

Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the banned nerve agent Novichok in the summer of 2020 by suspected agents of the Russian domestic secret service FSB.

He survived because he was flown to Germany shortly afterwards and was treated in the Berlin Charité.

Poisoning was also proven in Germany.

Researchers from the investigative platforms Bellingcat, The Insider and SPIEGEL then managed to identify the suspected attackers.

After his recovery, Navalny still decided to return to Russia in January 2021.

He was arrested shortly after landing in Moscow.

The Russian regime then brutally suppressed demonstrations in solidarity with Navalny.

Navalny himself was sentenced to long terms in prison camps in several show trials.

On Friday last week, a Russian prison authority reported that Navalny had died in a prison camp in Siberia.

The cause of death was “natural,” it was said afterwards.

Navalny's organization believes he was murdered by the regime.

Murder in the Kleiner Tiergarten 2019

The Berlin Court of Appeal sentenced Krasikov to life imprisonment in December 2021 for murder and illegally wielding a weapon.

The Senate also noted the particular gravity of the guilt.

According to the court, Krasikov murdered the Chechen-born Georgian Zelimkhan Khangoshvili with a Glock 26 with a silencer in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin on August 23, 2019.

The court said Krasikov's act was state terrorism.

Krasikov was part of the Russian security apparatus and was ordered to carry out the murder in Berlin by a "state agency within the government of the Russian Federation."

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