Georgian president: Navalny's death announcement 'no coincidence'

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili believes that the timing of the announcement of the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was not a coincidence, but a message from Russia.

"I think that it was no coincidence that the death of Navalny was announced a few hours or minutes before the start of the Munich conference," the 71-year-old told dpa in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Sunday.

"That is the usual character trait of the Russian activity, to try to psychologically impress that Russia is doing whatever it wants, wherever it wants. And that was a message, I think, for the conference in Munich," she said.

Navalny's team confirmed his death on Saturday, citing Navalny's mother Lyudmila Navalnaya. She had travelled to the prison camp in northern Russia and received the news of his death there, according to a post by Navalny's spokeswoman on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

The death of the 47-year-old critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been imprisoned since 2021, is said to have occurred on Friday at 2:17 pm (0917 GMT).

The Russian prison service first announced Navalny's death shortly before the start of the Munich Security Conference on Friday.