President Joe Biden said Friday he was “not surprised” and “outraged” by reports of the death of Alexei Navalny, the longtime Russian opposition politician and critic of Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced Navalny died in prison. The service claimed Navalny, 47, lost consciousness after a walk but gave no official cause of death.
“Russian authorities are going to tell their own story,” Biden said from the White House. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.”
Biden said while the U.S. is not yet sure exactly what happened, there was no reason to believe the reports out of Russia weren’t true.
“What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality,” the president said. “No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target his citizens of other countries, as we’ve seen in what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”
Biden commended Navalny for speaking up against Putin’s regime despite the consequences, which included being imprisoned on trumped charges and an assassination attempt in 2020.
“As people across Russia and around the world are mourning Navalny today, because he was so many things that Putin was not,” Biden said. “He was brave. He was principled. He was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed and where it applied to everybody.” (ABC)
