U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan released a statement in response to the reported death of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a prison in Siberia.
Navalny was a Russian opposition leader, and activist who organized demonstrations and ran for office to unset Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government
“Alexei Navalny was a very courageous Russian leader, respected by millions of Russians. His murder—and, let’s be clear: he was murdered—underscores the danger of the world in which we’re living and the brutality of the Putin regime,” Sullivan said.
“But it also underscores a huge vulnerability for the dictators of the world—Putin, the ayatollahs in Iran, and Xi Jinping: They fear their own people. Navalny had millions of Russians who looked up to him and wanted him to be an elected leader. As Putin was heading into his elections in the next several weeks, he decided to kill Navalny. The fact that dictators around the world fear their own people is a vulnerability that we have to work harder to exploit in our fight against authoritarian aggression,” Sullivan said.
President Joe Biden said that while he doesn’t know the details of Navalny’s death, “there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” It appears the president is using the death of Navalny to gin up support in the House for the funding for the Ukraine defense against Russia and Israel’s defense against Iran and other terrorist-fueling countries.
Alexei Navalny had already survived being poisoned and he had spent months in isolation, when he died in an Arctic Circle maximum-security prison. The 47-year-old Russian was seen on video on Thursday a court appearance in the Russian penal colony. He was smiling and making lighthearted comments.
Sullivan made his remarks from Munich, where he is leading a delegation to the Munich Security Conference.
“One of our greatest strengths relative to our adversaries—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea—is our vast network of allies, which administrations and U.S. Senators have built up over decades,” said Sullivan. “Given the increasingly dangerous world we live in, we need to deepen those alliances and strengthen U.S. credibility. The Munich Security Conference is a good opportunity to do that. The conference is also an opportunity to deliver a message from the American people: We expect our NATO allies to meet their defense spending obligations.”
