LETTER: Alexei Navalny is no paragon of virtue

Earlier this week (May 13) you published a front-page photo of Yulia Navalny, widow of activist Alexei Navalny, collecting the Dresden Peace Award in Germany.

John Pilger, the acclaimed journalist and film maker, wrote shortly before he died that the propaganda being perpetrated by the Western press regarding the “proxy war” in Ukraine is “unprecedented in history”. Unfortunately, holding Navalny up as a paragon of virtue and a hero is not only an untrue false flag but also a carefully orchestrated psyops campaign designed by Washington to advance the cause and case for aggressive Western imperialism. (And $61bn of US taxpayers’ money going to more weapons.)

Scott Ritter, the UN chief weapons investigator who blew the whistle on the false claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, recently described Navalny as “a controlled CIA asset”.

In a war where madness is prevailing over sanity, and the avarice of the military industrialists in the US and UK is trumping diplomacy, a simple agreement to neutrality by Ukraine would end the conflict tomorrow.

Cheap propaganda stunts aimed at drumming up support for a longer war with Russia are not serving global peace, and threatening the security of the country with more nuclear warheads than any other is plain stupid. 

Alexei Navalny’s death in prison was regrettable. But considering he is only supported by 2%-4% of the Russian population — and independent research by the Levada Foundation puts Vladimir Putin’s popularity among Russians at 85% — any sober political analyst knows that the only people to gain anything from his death are Western military hawks.

Russia is a sophisticated, cultured and proud country, and Putin has said  repeatedly that he is open to dialogue and negotiation, and ending the war — as long as Ukraine agrees to neutrality and no Nato. It is perfectly reasonable for Russia to expect that, and nothing less. The longer the war goes on, Ukraine is going to be left with less and less.

Peace and dialogue are the only viable options. If not now, when?

Jonny Cohen
Via email

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