“There will be a price to pay”: Joe Biden warns Putin and impeaches him for the death of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison. «I have heard several things that have not been confirmed. But the fact of the matter is that Putin is responsible. Regardless of whether he ordered it, he is responsible for the circumstances. It’s a reflection of who he is, it’s not acceptable,” he told reporters over the weekend at his beach house in Delaware. So he promised an answer, recalling that the Tsar is already paying a heavy price for the war in Ukraine, between sanctions and huge losses of soldiers. Among the options under consideration, there are also less conventional ones. Such as the release for the reconstruction of Ukraine of the 300 billion in Russian assets frozen in the USA and – for the most part – in Europe, in a move to be agreed with allies so as not to damage the dollar and euro as the world’s reserve currency.
The White House has already given its approval to the parliamentary measure, the EU is more cautious but the G7 under the Italian presidency is working on it. Meanwhile, the American Department of Justice has opened a breach, transferring for the first time confiscated Russian funds to a foreign country to be used to support Kiev. An operation facilitated by the verification of their ‘outside the law’ origin: it concerns almost 500,000 dollars deriving from «an illegal supply network which attempted to import into Russia a high precision machine tool of US origin with uses in the defense and of nuclear proliferation”.
The funds are transferred to Tallinn because US regulations do not allow a direct transfer to Ukraine. “This is a step forward towards justice and compensation for damages and opens a new path towards fighting Russia’s brutality,” explained Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco at the Munich Security Conference, promising that the Justice Department “will continue to pursue creative solutions to ensure that the Ukrainian people can respond and rebuild” and that the Biden administration will not wait for Congress but will use existing powers to help Kiev. Among the other cards to be played are sanctions against the children of Russian leaders living abroad, to put pressure on the Moscow elite, but it seems unlikely that this will make Putin change gear. Meanwhile, Biden, while reassuring Volodymr Zelensky about the aid, continues to attack the House Republicans who – pushed by Donald Trump – are blocking the financing package for Kiev which has already passed the Senate, and blames them for the fall of Avdiivka. “It’s the fault of Congress’ inaction, it’s absurd and immoral not to approve the aid,” he thundered, calling the two-week parliamentary pause “scandalous” which risks causing other Ukrainian territories to fall into the hands of the Russians. And weaken credibility. of American leadership in the world. “Please, everyone, remember that dictators don’t go on vacation. Hate knows no breaks. The enemy artillery is not silent for procedural reasons”, Zelensky echoed at the Munich Conference, while Trump was busy throwing his golden sneakers in Philadelphia while continuing to remain silent on Navalny. Meanwhile, the demonstrations in front of the Russian embassy in Washington against Putin continue: dozens of people, mostly Russian, show photos of the opponent, chant slogans such as ‘Russia without Putin’ and raise placards against the Russian leader, defined as a “murderer”. . In the columns of the Washington Post, however, the former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul celebrated Navalny as “the Russian Mandela”, an “extremely charismatic” person, with “a presence of the caliber of Barack Obama”, who “in a free election would have destroyed Putin”. “Navalny dreamed of a free Russia. Barbaric dictators like Putin can kill men, but they cannot kill ideas. I don’t know when, but I am confident that Navalny’s ideas of freedom will survive Putin’s tyrannical ones.”