Navalny’s death: Putin’s serial killer mind  

When he returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany, after surviving poisoning, Alexey Navalny knowingly put his life on the line.  

His message to Russians was “don’t be afraid”. 

His investigations exposing the thoroughly corrupt nature of the Kremlin regime were clinical, brazen and hard-hitting.  

Navalny liked taunting Putin and his close associates.  

He knew Putin’s weakest spots – his pathetic yearning for wealth and luxury, and constant fear of being seen for what he really is – a mediocre, ignoble and insecure little man. 

Navalny was not popular in Central Asia because of his past association with Russian nationalists, and his racist remarks about Central Asians – an attitude that many Russian ‘liberals’ and ‘intellectuals’ have, being representatives of a past colonial power in relation to our region. But that is a different subject.  

In a country where a large majority of the population are zombified by official propaganda, and a minority of free minds are paralysed by intimidation and physical suppression, Navalny was a lone symbol of resistance and defiance. 

That aside, after Navalny’s death, it seems, the most important thing is to call out the murderous nature of Putin’s rule and grieve all its victims.  

Navalny is the latest name on the list of hundreds of thousands whose lives have been taken directly or indirectly by Putin’s regime.  

Navalny is one of the most prominent victims, like Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Nemtsov. Among the known names are also Putin’s former associates, like Berezovsky and Prigozhin. 

The list is long enough ‘to qualify’ Putin as a serial killer.  

But there are hundreds of thousands of other victims, who are known only to their families and loved ones.  

There are the dozens, or hundreds, of thousands of Chechens – the estimates vary – killed in the Second Chechen War (1999-2009). 

More than 500,000 people have been killed or injured as a result of Putin’s war in Ukraine since 2014, and especially since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Looking at various estimates, it would be accurate to say that the war has killed over 10,000 Ukrainian civilians, and about 200,000 forces on both sides. 

The killing spree started by Putin in Ukraine is continuing. The death toll grows every day.  

Putin is used to killing. With the impunity that large amounts of power gives to rulers.  

The outcry by Western politicians over Navalny’s death sounds insincere and empty, given their continuous Russia policy failures; their record of double standards when it comes to human rights and democracy issues; their half-hearted support for Ukraine; and the abandonment of the Palestinians in the face of the Israeli onslaught.  

Navalny could have been killed at any moment since his return to Russia in January 2021. 

The Kremlin decided ‘to serve up’ his dead body before the 17 March election.  

To instil fear, to remind everyone that Putin is not to be messed with. That he won’t stop at anything. 

Death and fear. There is nothing else that Putin can ‘ride on’ into his next term.  

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