National security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared weak when his administration ordered that his late political opponent have a private funeral.
Sullivan appeared on State of the Union Sunday to respond to the news that Alexi Navalny’s body had been returned to his mother. Before being reunited with the body, Navalny’s mother was pressured to only hold a private funeral for her son. A public mourning would likely draw huge crowds as protesters have already taken to the streets amid the news of his death.
“What I’ve been struck by is the commentary in the United States that the death of Alexei Navalny has some great show of strength by Vladimir Putin when in fact, the very idea that he had to lock this guy up, try to muzzle and silence him, and now he‘s trying to suppress and silence anyone who wants to come out and mourn him, that‘s a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength,” Sullivan said.
“So from our perspective, what we would like to see is a situation in which the Russian people and individual Russian dissidents like Alexei Navalny are not subjected to the kind of brutal repression and the conditions that led to Alexei Navalny‘s death,” Sullivan went on. “That‘s why the president came out and imposed a sweeping set of sanctions this past week to send a clear message about where the United States stands on this issue.”
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The national security adviser also expressed that Navalny’s mother should have whatever funeral she’d like, as “a basic human thing.”
Navalny was missing for 11 weeks before his death was confirmed by the Kremlin. Throughout that several-week period, Navalny’s lawyers did not hear from their client. Navalny missed a virtual court date, and letters sent to him were not delivered.
