FBK head Maria Pevchikh claims that Navalny’s team negotiated his exchange for FSB officer Vadim Krasikov

Alexei Navalny’s team was negotiating his exchange for FSB officer Vadim Krasikov, and on the eve of the politician’s murder, they received confirmation that the agreement was at the final stage. The head of FBK, Maria Pevchikh, spoke about this.

“Navalny was supposed to be free in the coming days because we achieved a decision on his exchange. In early February, Putin was offered to exchange the killer, FSB officer Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a sentence for murder in Berlin, for two American citizens and Alexei Navalny. I received confirmation that negotiations are underway and are in the final stages on the evening of February 15th. On February 16, Alexey was killed,” Pevchikh said.

As the head of FBK clarified, due to the fact that Navalny is a Russian citizen, he could not be exchanged according to the standard procedure. In this regard, the oppositionist’s comrades decided to organize a humanitarian exchange - “Russian spies in exchange for political prisoners.”

The implementation of the exchange plan, which investigative journalist Hristo Grozev helped come up with, took two years, Pevchikh added. According to her, this could have taken less time if not for the position of American and German officials, who “nod their heads in understanding” but did nothing. Pevchikh did not name the names of the people who helped establish unofficial contact with the Kremlin, but noted that “some of them risked their careers, and others literally their lives, conducting unofficial negotiations with Putin’s bandits.”

The death of Alexei Navalny in IK-3 in Kharp became known on February 16. Only on the evening of February 21, the politician’s mother Lyudmila was able to see her son’s body. The medical report that she was shown indicated “natural causes” of death. Navalny’s body was given to his mother only on February 24. Before this, investigators demanded that Lyudmila Navalnaya hold a secret funeral.

Officially, the German authorities have not yet commented on the FBK report on negotiations on the exchange of Alexei Navalny for Krasikov, convicted in Germany.

At the same time, sources of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper “in Western government circles” claim that negotiations between Berlin and Moscow on the exchange of Navalny for Krasikov have “progressed far.” In this regard, the German government “was especially shocked” by the news of Navalny’s death.

Financial Times sources also confirm the fact of “discussion” of the terms of a possible exchange of Krasikov for Navalny, Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and another American convicted in Russia, Paul Whelan. With the death of Navalny, Berlin’s interest in the deal has greatly decreased, the publication notes: “They no longer have candidates for exchange that would make the release of a state-sent killer justified.”

Representatives of the American authorities told the New York Times that Germany made Navalny's release a condition for the exchange of Krasikov, but did not comment on the progress of negotiations on this topic.

Updated February 27. Added comments from sources Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Financial Times and New York Times.