The report is out from Russia that Alexei Navalny has died while in prison. “Prison” is a loose term, as he was being held a penal colony above the Arctic Circle in west Siberia.

The circumstances of his death are not confirmed, and his death is actually not confirmed, either. His legal representatives are trying to confirm the news for themselves. Navalny had just made an appearance yesterday in court, where he didn’t look unwell for a man living in an Arctic gulag.

Yesterday, Aleksey Navalny spoke in court via video link. He seemed to be in good health and and even joked. https://t.co/iXxwW3MSXM pic.twitter.com/mXDeJuVpPg

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 16, 2024

But then mysteriously, he is alleged to have just dropped dead after going for a walk. Funny how that happens to people who oppose Vladimir Putin.

Navalny felt unwell after a walk Friday, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, and lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived, but he could not be revived. The service said the cause of death was “being established.”

Navalny had been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Since then, he was convicted three times, and reject each case as politically motivated.

After the last verdict, Navalny said he understood that he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”

We have been watching the actions and activism of Alexei Nalvany for a long time. Everyone knew that he would likely never leave prison alive in Putin’s Russia, as those who stand up to or cross Putin end up dead in highly convenient fashion. And the timing of the announcement of Navalny’s passing is… fast.

Information about the death of Aleksey Navalny appeared on the website of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District two minutes after the death reportedly occurred. Never do the authorities act so promptly, especially when it comes to… https://t.co/e3XZHMyKd7 pic.twitter.com/9wrKNf5udc

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 16, 2024

One has to wonder if that “blood clot” that allegedly killed Navalny was caused by a bullet to the head. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was in Munich at the security conference of world leaders when she received the news.

Speaking from the main stage at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Navalnaya said that if her husband did in fact die — expressing skepticism because her team had only heard it from Russian government sources — she wants Putin and his friends in power to know that they “bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband.”

She said she wavered on whether to speak at the conference or to fly straight to the couple’s two children.

“But then I thought what Alexey would do in my place. And I’m sure he would be here. He would be on this stage.”

The open question right now is, what will Joe Biden and his administration do? Putin has long been their boogeyman, and it’s natural that people are now bringing up Biden’s own words from 2021 regarding Navalny.

FLASHBACK: I asked President Biden at his June 2021 summit with Vladimir Putin in Geneva what the consequences would be if Navalny died

Biden’s answer: The consequences for Russia would be “devastating” pic.twitter.com/5Ye5YxEDnD

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) February 16, 2024

First point of order – does anyone think Biden actually remembers anything he said in June 2021 regarding Alexei Navalny? That mental ship has sailed a long time ago. Biden isn’t even at the security conference right now – Kamala Harris and Antony Blinken are there instead. Harris was scheduled to give a speech, which is now likely being rewritten to reflect the news. But it seems that Secretary of State Antony Blinken got the job of being the first administration official to make an on-camera comment about Navalny’s death.

US Sec of State Blinken on Navalny’s death:

“Our hearts go out to his wife and his family. His death in a Russian prison and fear of one man only underscores weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built. Russia is responsible for this”pic.twitter.com/6GkaHn88zL

— IRIA (@IRIA_Research) February 16, 2024

It was early enough in the day that the White House was able to get Joe Biden in front of a camera as well for a statement.

BREAKING: President Biden EXPLODES, says President Putin responsible for Alexei Navalny's death, says as a response, the House should pass the bill to send money to Ukraine to fight Russia. WATCH pic.twitter.com/yZv2kD6Z09

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) February 16, 2024

Second point – the comment about Navalny was made well before Putin invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. What possible “consequences” could be “devastating” to Russia at this current moment? The Biden administration has championed Ukraine throughout this entire invasion and resulting stalemate, with Joe still pushing the need for more funding for Ukraine. Russia has been under sanctions since the invasion. I’m not sure that there is anything more that Joe Biden and his administration would be willing to do to punish Putin for Navalny’s death at this point – which means that Vladimir Putin had exactly nothing left to lose by offing his biggest political rival in prison at this moment. What leverage does the Biden administration have that they haven’t already used by now? Yes, the administration will insist on pushing the Ukraine funding bill through the House – and if Speaker Mike Johnson is smart, he would sever the Ukraine portion off the big spending bill and pass it cleanly in the House without any extra attachments. Then he should do the same for Israel and Taiwan. But it looks like a new collective spending bill that will roll all the foreign aid plus border security together again is being introduced in the House by a bipartisan group. Will this bill move forward in light of today’s news with any additional urgency? Who knows. Volodymyr Zelensky is busy drumming up support in Europe while in Munich, and is more than happy to point the finger directly at Putin for Navalny’s death – after all, Zelensky has nothing to lose, either.

Alexei Navalny knew that he was never getting out of prison so long as Vladimir Putin was in control of Russia. And he was prepared to die for what he believed in.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1758477103962468366
No one watching Biden giving his statement today is afraid of what he might do in retaliation. All Biden wants to do is send more money and complain about Trump’s comments regarding NATO. Navalny’s death will not make much of an impact on the average American who isn’t a news hound. But will his death make an impact within Russia itself? Is this the moment when the average Russian stops and asks “what happens now?” Joe Biden will talk big and then shuffle away. What the Russian people decide to do now is the bigger question.

Featured image: Alexei Navalny in February 2021, via Evgeny Feldman on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)