At the time of the announcement of the death of Alexey Navalny on the state broadcaster “Rossiya 1” the 2 pm edition of the news was underway. Yet the presenter said nothing about what happened. In the first news block, reports were launched about the situation at the front, about the arrest of saboteurs on the border of Belarus with Ukraine, about Patrushev’s trip to Bishkek, about new models of drones, about growth in wages and even about new broadcast entertainment television. Not a word about suddenness death of the activist in the Kharp penal colony. The same happened on the main federal channels.
Navalny’s mother: “I saw him a few days ago, he was well and happy” February 16, 2024
Timidly, around 3pm in Moscow, the official announcement from the Federal Penitentiary Service was reported on the first channel: “He felt ill immediately after the walk; the resuscitation practices were of no use.” But at 3.15pm the main news of the day was already something else: President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Chelyabinsk. The live broadcast of the meeting with students and employees of local companies occupied the entire Russian media space for an hour.
By then it was known that the president already knew about the death of his most popular opponent. Even before the start of the meeting, the presidential spokesperson admitted, Dmitry Peskov. Yet in almost an hour of conference, Putin did not make the slightest reference to Navalny’s death. After all, no one asked him any questions about the political activist. The meeting ended around 4.20pm. At that time, federal channels had released only a few updates on the Navalny case, picked up by news agencies and press releases.
From Litvinenko to Politkovskaja, from Prigozhin to Navalny: all the enemies “killed” by Putin by Enrico Franceschini 16 February 2024
Even at the opening of the political talk show “Bolshaja Igra” (Great Game), the reference to Navalny’s death was limited to the statement from the Penitentiary Service, but the presenter then added: “The influence of the West is crumbling: this means that our cause is just, victory will be ours.” During a similar program live on Ntv, Vtrechi town (Meeting place), the president of the Jabloko party, Nikolaj Rybakovtried to express his condolences for the activist’s death, but was interrupted by host Andrei Norkin.
Navalny’s last months in the “Polar Wolf”, the isolated prison in the Russian Arctic by Riccardo Ricci 16 February 2024
While Margarita Simonyan, head of Rtformerly Russia Today, reported that it had already collected the first enthusiastic comments from several “victims” of the anti-corruption activist’s investigations, clips of the 2022 documentary in which Alexey Navalny he stated: “In case I am killed, simply do not give up.”
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