'LOST HIS MIND'
Putin was ‘mentally unstable’ and ‘hysterical’ when he ‘ordered Alexei Navalny’s murder’ former speechwriter claims
Navalny is believed to have been murdered by the Kremlin
PUTIN'S former speechwriter has claimed that the despot was "mentally unstable" when he "ordered" the killing of Navalny.
The shocking claims came shortly after Navalny's body has gone missing after being handed to investigators.
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Abbas Gallyamov believes his ex-boss was directly responsible for the death of his biggest critic.
Gallyamov worked alongside the warmonger when Putin served as a prime minister in 2008, briefly giving up the throne to his crony - Dmitry Medvedev.
The former speechwriter has now made a shocking claim that the Russian president has "lost his mind".
He told : "When he was deciding to kill Navalny he was not mentally stable, he was emotional and I would say hysterical.
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"He is very irrational and lives in his own world.
"Putin is not mentally stable, he has very high ups and downs.
"He lost his mind. His mind is off balance."
Prison authorities said Navalny fell unconscious and died after a walk at feared jail where he was serving a three-decade sentence.
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His death was confirmed at 14:17 local time on February 16, according to a document given to Navalny's mother, Lyudmila.
Navalny, Putin's leading domestic critic in Russia, had bravely challenged the tyrant's rule and his horrific war in Ukraine.
Jerome Starkey discusses Alexei Navalny's 'shocking' death and what it means for the political future of Russia
Many of his supporters had fears that he would be assassinated while behind bars for his strong support from the public outside of prison.
This has prompted claims that Navalny was actually killed on the direct orders of Putin by someone in the prison.
Gallyamov added: "He is emotionally off balance. Over the past two years, he had disappeared for weeks at a time.
"That means he didn't know what to do, or what to say. He couldn't get himself together.
"After Prigozhin's mutiny in 2023, Putin was hysterical."
Putin's opponents die in mysterious circumstances
By Nick Parker
TRAGIC Navalny is the latest in a long line of Putin opponents and rivals to die in mysterious circumstances.
His death came just six months after the Russian tyrant's last public challenger - Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin - died in a fireball jet smash believed to have been caused by a bomb.
Warlord Prigozhin's days were numbered after he launched a failed coup in which his troops turned on Moscow - and Putin is thought to have directly ordered the air "accident".
Scores of political opponents, oligarchs and insubordinate business chiefs have met similar suspicious fates in recent years as paranoid Putin shored up his power base.
They include politician Boris Nemtsov, killed with six shots in the back and head in February 2015 on a Moscow bridge; top Russian journalist and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya who was shot dead in an elevator in June 2014 and Alexander Litvinenko who died in agony in London after being poisoned with radioactive polonium tea in 2006.
Putin agents also attempted to kill Russian turncoat Sergei Skripal with Novichok after he fell foul of the Kremlin regime and fled to Salisbury, Wilts.
The suspicions surrounding Navalny's untimely death have been raised further when his body has gone missing after being handed to investigators.
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh demanded his body was immediately handed over to his family to say goodbye but it has somehow gone missing.
Navalny’s corpse is reportedly not in the morgue in Salekhard - on the Arctic Circle - where his family was told by officials it had been taken to.
Russian authorities say they delayed the release of the body because they haven't found the cause of death yet.
Yarmysh revealed: “Another lawyer of Navalny, who came to the Salekhard Investigative Committee, was informed that ‘the cause of Alexei’s death has not been established, a repeat histological examination was taken’.
“It is obvious that they are lying and doing everything not to give up the body. Now the Investigative Committee directly says that until the check is completed, Alexei’s body will not be given to relatives.”
His body is now with investigators as they look for the cause of death.
The results are not expected to be announced until next week.
Many are suspicious by the circumstances surrounding his death after he was seen laughing and joking with a judge on a video call Thursday.
His family also said he was in good health when they visited him in jail just three days before his death.
He had been “cheerful and healthy” in the days before his death.
Respected Russian political analyst Ekaterina Shulman told Bild in Russian: “We don't have too many reasons to suspect a natural death.”
"We see an intentional murder in front of our eyes, not something else," she said.
“Not even death from hard conditions (in the Arctic jail).”
People in Russia have said he could have potentially been drugged or poisoned inside the colony run by Colonel Vadim Kalinin, 51.
Former FSB colonel Gennady Gudkov, 67, an opposition politician like Navalny, backed these theories.
He said: “He was kept… in torture conditions.
“Either his organism did not overcome such torture (or) they might have given some medication that causes heart failure, they could have given a poison.
“We will only learn the truth when Putin is gone. The fact that they killed him is beyond any doubt.”
The life of Alexei Navalny, Putin's biggest critic
HERE is a timeline that shows how the leader of the opposition went from the face of freedom in Russia and the Kremlin's biggest foe to a hellhole Siberian prison - and possibly an early grave.
June 4, 1976 — Navalny is born in a western part of the Moscow region
1997 — Graduates from Russia's RUDN university, where he majored in law
2004 — Forms a movement against rampant over-development in Moscow
2008 — Gains notoriety for calling out corruption in state-run corporation
December 2011 — Participates in mass protests sparked by reports of widespread rigging of Russia's election, and is arrested and jailed for 15 days for "defying a government official"
March 2012 - Further mass protests break out and Navalny accuses key Kremlin cronies of corruption
July 2012 — Russia's Investigative Committee charges Navalny with embezzlement. He rejects the claims and says they are politically motivated
2013 — Navalny runs for mayor in Moscow
July 2013 — A court in Kirov convicts Navalny of embezzlement in the Kirovles case, sentencing him to five years in prison - he appeals and is allowed to continue campaign
September 2013 — Official results show Navalny finishes second in the mayor's race
February 2014 — Navalny is placed under house arrest
December 2014 — Navalny and his brother, Oleg, are found guilty of fraud
February 2016 — The European Court of Human Rights rules that Russia violated Navalny's right to a fair trial
November 2016 — Russia’s Supreme Court overturns Navalny's sentence
December 2016 — Navalny announces he will run in Russia’s 2018 presidential election
February 2017 — The Kirov court retries Navalny and upholds his five-year suspended sentence from 2013
April 2017 - Survives an assassination attempt he blames on Kremlin
December 2017 — Russia's Central Electoral Commission bars him from running for president
August, 2020 - Navalny falls into a coma on a flight and his team suspects he was poisoned. German authorities confirm he was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent
Jan 2021 — After five months in Germany, Navalny is arrested upon his return to Russia
Feb 2021 — A Moscow court orders Navalny to serve 2 ½ years in prison
June 2021 — A Moscow court shuts down Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his extended political network
Feb 2022 — Russia invades Ukraine
March 2022 — Navalny is sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court
2023 — Over 400 Russian doctors sign an open letter to Putin, urging an end to what it calls abuse of Navalny, following reports that he was denied basic medication & suffering from slow poisoning
April, 2023 — Navalny from inside prison says he was facing new extremism and terrorism charges that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life
Aug 2023 - A court in Russia extends Navalny's prison sentence by 19 years
Dec 2023 - He disappears from his prison as his team fear he could be assassination. He then reappears weeks later in one of Siberia's toughest prisons - the 'Polar Wolf' colony
WORLDWIDE REACTIONS
David Cameron scolded Vladimir Putin for his role in Navalny's death saying "we should hold Putin accountable" as he blasted Russia's "dreadful" regime.
He said: "There should be consequences... look what Putin's Russia did to him.
"He's died and that is because of the action that Putin's Russia took. No one can look at this regime now and not recognise it for the truly dreadful nature that it has."
Protesters gathered outside the London embassy chanting critical slogans against Putin, such as "Putin in is a murderer", "the war must stop" and "love is stronger than the war".
Many chanted slogans critical of Vladimir Putin, whom they blamed for the activist's death, holding up signs calling him a "killer" and demanding accountability.
One signs read: "Putin in is a murderer."
As two others showed "the war must stop" and "love is stronger than the war".
US President Joe Biden said in remarks from the White House: "Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny's death."
He added: "Even in prison he was a powerful voice for the truth."
Latvian president Edgars Rinkevics raged on X that Navalny was "brutally murdered by the Kremlin".
And Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy raged: "Obviously, Putin killed him".
In Berlin, a crowd of around 500 to 600 people gathered on the city's Unter den Linden boulevard chanting in a mixture of Russian, German and English.
Some shouted "Putin to the Hague", referring to the international criminal court investigating possible war crimes committed in Ukraine.
Police used barriers to close off the road between the Russian embassy and the crowd.
"Alexei Navalny is the leader of the Russian opposition and we always kept hope in his name," said a Russian man draped in a blue-and-white anti-war flag, giving his name only as Ilia.
In Lithuania, formerly run from Moscow but now a member of NATO and the European Union, protesters placed flowers and candles by a portrait of Navalny.
"He was always with us, so it is all surreal," said Lyusya Shtein, 26, a Pussy Riot activist who has lived in Vilnius since leaving Russia in 2022.
"None of us yet understand what happened," she added.
In Russia itself, prosecutors warned Russians against participating in any mass protest in Moscow.
Police watched as some Russians came to lay roses and carnations at a monument to victims of Soviet repression in the shadow of the former KGB headquarters.
Groups also gathered in Rome, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sofia, Geneva and The Hague.
More than 100 protesters stood outside Russia's London embassy, holding placards that called Putin a war criminal.
While in Lisbon hundreds held a silent vigil.
Pavel Elizarov, a 28-year-old Russian living in Portugal, said Navalny had been "a symbol of freedom and hope."
Near the Russian embassy in Paris, where around 100 protesters gathered, Natalia Morozov said Navalny had also been a symbol of hope for her.
Navalny's wife, Yulia, was in Munich on Friday, where a vigil also took place.
She told the Munich Security Conference she could not be sure her husband was dead because "Putin and his government... lie incessantly".
Yulia said that if confirmed she wanted them to know "they will bear responsibility".
On the other side of the Atlantic, at a vigil outside the Russian consulate in New York City, Violetta Soboleva said she had volunteered for Navalny's presidential campaign in 2017.
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"I really believed that he's the one and he can lead Russia to a better future," said Soboleva, a Russian studying for her doctorate in New York.
She continued: "And now we've lost this future forever."
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