US President Joe Biden on Friday said that he was “not surprised” after the reported death of famous Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said.
Washington: US President Joe Biden on Friday reacted to the reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, stating that he was ‘not surprised’ but ‘outraged’. “He bravely stood up to the corruption, the violence and all the bad things the Putin government was doing. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said at the White House. Russian opposition leader Navalny died after losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle on Friday. He was serving a jail term at the prison. The 47-year-old was one of the most famous opposition leaders in Russia and he rose to prominence by lampooning the elite class and raising allegations of corruption on a vast scale.
Notably, the White House was seeking details about Navalny’s death at the prison, where he was taken less than two months ago.
Bitter US-Russian Relations
However, Biden’s remarks has put a further chill into already bitter US-Russian relations.
The 47-year-old Navalny had been a vocal critic of the Russian President, and President Biden had stated after meeting Putin in Geneva in 2021 that Nalvany’s death would risk devastating consequences for him.
Notably, the relationship between Biden and Putin remains tense over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden is continuously requesting Republicans in the US Congress to support additional funding for more weaponry for Ukraine.
Biden’s Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, slammed him last week by saying he would do nothing to defend NATO allies from Russia unless they paid a major share for the common defenses.
The leading Republican in the House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson, has refrained from bringing a Senate bill for additional funding for Ukraine to a vote. Following Navalny’s death, he expressed the opinion that the United States and its allies should employ “every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.”
In Munich for a crucial security conference, Vice President Kamala Harris assured that US would never retreat from its NATO alliance obligations put in place after World War Two.
She also met with Alexei Navalny’s wife Yulia and expressed her sorrow and outrage over reports of her husband’s death.