It should be pointed out that while Navalny certainly was an opponent of Putin, to the point where Putin obviously just had him killed, he was hardly a "hero." I get that Putin is our enemy and that by being his enemy, Navalny sort of become our friend, but he was not some kind of a Nelson Mandela figure he has been made out to the best the last couple of years. Or, if I'm going to be a little more cynical, the kind of figure Navalny had conveniently tried to make himself out to be the last few years.
Navalny was not only a Russian nationalist, but the kind that 15 years ago became an opponent of Putin specifically because he didn't think Putin was a big enough of a nationalist. Navalny participated in and latter even co-organized the annual Russian March parades. If you don't know what these parades are, I'll save you the googling time and just show you this picture from one of them. The shields say "for Russian people" and "for Russian power/authority." Notice that none of the flags are the white-red-blue Russian state flags. You can probably guess why.
Navalny was heavily involved in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim causes. During 2013 anti-immigrant riots in Moscow, Alexei Navalny played up his populist nationalism as he championed the rioters' for confronting "hordes of legal and illegal immigrants" on his blog. Sounds familiar, eh?
Navalny supported Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008. He also supported Putin's view that Russia had the right to interfere in the internal politics of former Soviet republics.
As recently as 2012, Navalny was making comments that denied the existence of Ukrainian people and championing the idea of triune Russian people(Great, Little and White Russian...known by normal people as the Russian nation, Ukrainian nation, and the Belarus nation).
I think we're much better off seeing this as Sollozzo having Luca Brasi killed. Just a big villain killing a smaller villain.
cepa.org
