This audio contains an interview with Michael McFaul, Professor of Political Science, Director of Freeman Spogli Institute & Hoover Senior Fellow all at Stanford University. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, 2012-2014 and was a close friend of Navalny. He explained how he thought the West should react to his murder by Putin. It was first broadcast on BBC’s PM programme on the evening of his death.

On 16 February 2024 Russian prison officials announced the death of Alexei Navalny at the age of 47 while serving a 19-year prison sentence in a penal colony inside the Russian Arctic.

Navalny was one of the most prominent critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin, having denounced corruption under his regime. Putin hated Navalny and attempted several times to kill him, including having him poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020. His life was saved in a German hospital but he insisted on returning to Russia where he was immediately arrested.

Putin was widely blamed for the murder of Navalny by leaders around the world.

Another interview with Professor McFaul following Navalny’s death can be found here.

More about the death of Navalny here on Wikipedia.

Image credits left to right:

• Navalny’s wife Yulia, Alexey Navalny and Ilya Yashin at a Moscow rally in 2013. Image by Bogomolov.PL
• Anti-Putin rally by Russian supporters of the #FreeNavalny campaign on Alexey Navalny’s 47th birthday 4 June 2023 at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. Image by A.Savin, Wikipedia
• Temporary exhibition in 2023 on the Place des Nations, Geneva, of a replica of the solitary confinement cell where Alexeï Navalny had been detained several times. Image by Markus Schweizer