“As for Mr. Navalny, yes, he passed away, this is always a sad event, but we have had other cases when people in prison passed away.
Hasn’t this happened in the United States?”
— the president said, answering a question from an American correspondent.
In the United States, this “has happened more than once,” Vladimir Putin emphasized.
“By the way, I’ll tell you - this will be unexpected - a few days before Mr. Navalny passed away, some colleagues told me, not administration employees, some people, they said that there was an idea to exchange Mr. Navalny for some people who are in the imprisonment in Western countries.
You may believe me, you may not - the person who spoke to me had not yet finished his sentence, and I said: “I agree.”
Unfortunately, what happened happened.
Only under one condition (they could exchange it. -
RT
): we change it so that it doesn’t come back - let it sit there, that’s all.
Well, this happens... Such is life,” said the Russian President.
On February 16, Alexei Navalny died in a colony; after a walk, he felt unwell and lost consciousness.
On August 4, 2023, he was sentenced to 19 years in a special regime colony in a criminal case for creating an extremist community.
* Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny - included in the register of individuals involved in terrorism and extremism.