KELLEY KIDD February 2024
On the 16th of February I was sad to learn that Alexei Navalny had died suddenly in a maximum security Russian prison where the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, had placed him to punish and silence his opposition to Putin’s oppressive domestic and imperialistic foreign policies. Clearly this 47 year old had no serious prior health problems other than those he experienced several years ago when he nearly died as the result of being poisoned by Putin’s attempt to kill him while he was outside of Russia. Navalny courageously returned to Russia after recovering. He was arrested and imprisoned in a harsh prison above the arctic circle. There really is no reason to doubt that Navalny was murdered on the orders of Vladimir Putin. Former South Carolina Governor Mickey Haley promptly observed that “Trump must answer for that.” I agree.
A brief recitation of related events in the previous two weeks show that Putin had been encouraged to take whatever actions he wanted, including murder, to achieve his personal objectives. And that encouragement had come from Donald Trump and his followers in he media and the Congress.
On the 4th of February the U.S. Senate passed bipartisan legislation intended, among other objectives, to provide badly needed funding to enable the Ukraine to continue brave resistance to Putin’s attempt to subject that sovereign nation to him and the Russia he dominates. Simultaneously the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives announced after consultation with Trump that the bipartisan written and approved Senate bill was “dead on arrival.” Thereby Trump succeeded in damaging both the logistical and morale support the Ukraine has badly needed to resist Putin’s attempt to subjugate it.
A few days later Trump made a widely publicized speech in which he encouraged Putin to “do whatever he wanted to do” to any nation that has failed to live up to target expenditures on defense. One clear subtext was obviously that the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency would not stand in Putin’s way by opposing even further aggression in Europe against sovereign nations–even those who are co-members of alliances with the United States. Trump of course is obviously leading in polls that predict who will be the President by this time next year.
On the same day Tucker Carlson’s political idol Donald Trump was inviting Putin to attack “debtor” nations, Carlson himself was interviewing the dictator with such soft and friendly questions that Putin later complained he would have preferred some sharper ones. For two hours Putin told Carlson his rationale for invading the Ukraine and reiterated his dishonest appraisal of the Ukrainian leadership and democracy. Among many obvious lies Putin alleged again that the Ukraine’s Jewish President was the leader of Nazi political forces. Tens of millions of American voters have since seen Tucker’s presentation of Putin’s dishonest self-justification and his equally dishonest degrading of his critics–including Alexei Navalny.
On February 12 Putin’s government announced that the president of neighboring Estonia was a “wanted criminal” in Russia! Her “crime” was that the Estonian government was removing some of the monuments in Estonia placed by Russia during the Soviet era domination of Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states and Ukraine. Putin is obviously being emboldened for still other acts of imperialism.
Then only a couple of days before Navalny died Carlson told an interviewer that “leadership requires killing. All leaders kill people.” Friday, the day of Navalny’s death at Putin’s hands, Trump’s puppets struck again when Speaker adjourned the House for two weeks, ending any hope for any delivery of U.S. aid to assist Ukraine in resisting Putin’s aggression at this time . A city in the Ukraine fell under Russian control and Navalny died of undisclosed cause. Russia has yet to announce the cause of death, but no one doubts that Putin was doing here what he has repeatedly done to overcome opposition. Once again he simply committed murder. This time with the encouragement of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress and media. There is blood on their hands.
Journal of Public Law 