According to US intelligence, Putin most likely did not give the order to assassinate Navalny: WSJ

London: The Wall Street Journal said on Saturday that US intelligence services have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin most likely did not order opposition lawmaker Alexei Navalny’s death in an Arctic detention camp in February.

At the age of 47, Navalny was one of Putin’s most vocal domestic opponents. His supporters, whom the government had labeled as radicals, claimed that Putin had killed him and promised to provide evidence to support their claim.
Any governmental participation has been denied by the Kremlin.

Putin referred to Navalny’s passing as “sad” last month and said that, provided the politician never returned to Russia, he was prepared to throw the imprisoned leader over to the West in a prisoner swap. According to Navalny’s associates, such discussions had already begun.
According to The Journal, which on Saturday quoted anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation, U.S. intelligence services had come to the conclusion that Putin most likely did not give the order to assassinate Navalny in February.

It stated that Washington had not released the Russian leader from all liability for Navalny’s demise, despite the fact that the opposition politician had been a target of Russian authorities for years, had been imprisoned on politically motivated charges, and had been nerve-agent poisoned in 2020.
The 2020 poisoning is not state-sponsored, according to the Kremlin.
The Journal article, which quoted sources stating that the conclusion had been “widely acknowledged 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,” was not independently corroborated by Reuters.
The article quoted some of its sources as stating that the U.S. view was based on a variety of evidence, including some secret intelligence and a study of public facts, including the timing of Navalny’s death and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election in March.