Russian dissident and Putin critic Alexei Navalny warned of the dangers of Donald Trump’s second term as president, calling the former commander-in-chief’s agenda “really scary” in a prison letter to a friend.
In the message, first reported by The New York Times, Navalny wrote that if President Joe Biden were to develop a health problem, “Trump will become president… Does this obvious thing not concern the Democrats?”
The activist wrote to photographer Evgeny Feldman when he expressed his concerns, showing that despite being in exile, he remained informed about geopolitics.
“Please name one current politician you admire,” he asked Feldman in the conclusion of a letter about Trump he wrote from the penal colony known as The Polar Wolf.
Meanwhile, in bizarre comments surrounding Navalny’s death, Trump did not refer to the role of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but used his platform to compare it to his own personal legal troubles.
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me increasingly aware of what is happening in our country. It is slow, steady progress, with CROOKED, radical left politicians, prosecutors and judges leading us down a path to destruction,” he wrote on TruthSocial.
Russian authorities said Navalny’s cause of death Friday at the age of 47 was still unknown — and the results of any investigation were likely to be questioned abroad. Many Western leaders have already said they hold Putin responsible for the deaths.
Navalny points out that if President Joe Biden faces a health problem, Trump could easily win a second term
Alexei Navalny shared letters full of dark humor, religious references and grim insights into prison life with a former Gulag survivor, Natan Sharansky, in the year before he died, their newly published notes show.
Trump’s bizarre message comparing his legal troubles to Navalny’s death has been roundly criticized
In several speeches on potential foreign policy, Trump has said his administration would not defend NATO members that fail to meet defense spending targets and that he would encourage Russia to attack member states that become delinquent.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the accusations from Western leaders “crass” and “inadmissible.”
“These statements cannot harm the head of our state, but they certainly do not suit those who make them,” Peskov said in a telephone call with reporters.
In response to the shocking statement, Representative Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki in an interview that his comments were “below the dignity of a human being.”
“It makes you wonder, what does Putin have to do with Donald Trump that he should always be beholden to him, his buddy in the mean?” she said.
‘It’s so terrible that you think: ‘No, that must have been someone. Not even Donald Trump could go that far.” This statement should disqualify him from being anything, let alone president of the United States.”
Trump’s comments came as Navalny’s widow vowed Monday to continue his fight against the Kremlin, while authorities denied his mother access to a morgue where his body is believed to be held after his death.
Her voice cracking at times in a video posted to social media, Yulia Navalnaya accused Putin of killing her husband in the remote prison and claimed officials’ refusal to hand over the body to her mother-in-law was part of a cover-up. upwards.
Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its most famous and inspiring politician, less than a month before elections that will almost certainly give Putin another six years in power.
It was a devastating blow to many Russians, who had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Putin’s relentless crackdown on the opposition.
He had been jailed since January 2021 when he returned to Moscow after recovering in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
He received three prison sentences Since his arrest, he has dismissed a number of charges as politically motivated.
“They are cowardly and mean and hide his body, refuse to give it to his mother and lie miserably waiting for the trail of the poison to disappear,” Navalnaya said, suggesting her husband may have been killed with a nerve agent in the Novichok style.
She urged Russians to rally behind her “to share not only the sadness and endless pain that has enveloped and gripped us, but also my anger.”
She continued: “The most important thing we can do for Alexei and ourselves is to keep fighting. … We must all come together in one strong fist and attack that crazy regime.”
In other letters, Navalny exchanged deeply personal memos with Israel’s former Deputy Prime Minister Sharansky, 76, in March and April 2023.
In his first note he wrote “I hope I am the last to endure this,” less than a year before he was fatally poisoned with Novichok on February 16, 2024 in a penal colony in Siberia.
Sharanski was held in a Moscow labor camp for nine years starting in 1978 after being denied permission to leave the then-Soviet Union for Israel, and the two bonded over how little has changed in Russia’s brutal prison system since then.
Their historic friendship – commemorated in the letters obtained by The free press – was sparked by Navalny’s revelation that he had read Sharansky’s memoir, Fear No Evil, in the gulag where he died.