President Biden says 'Putin and his thugs' are responsible for death of Alexei Navalny

WASHINGTON ― President Joe Biden blamed the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Vladimir Putin and put the Russian leader on notice that the U.S. was exploring consequences.

"Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny's death," Biden said Friday in remarks from the White House's Roosevelt Room. "What has happened is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled. Not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world.”

Navalny, 47, who had survived a poisoning and spent months in isolation, died in an Arctic Circle maximum-security prison, Russian state media reported Friday. Navalny was last seen Thursday, smiling and making jokes in a video taken during a court appearance in the Russian penal colony where he was in captivity.

Biden said he is "both not surprised and outraged" by Navalny's death. He said the U.S. doesn’t know exactly what happened, “but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”

"We're looking at a whole number of options," Biden said of the U.S. response, while renewing his push for Congress to approve security funding for Ukraine. "This tragedy reminds us of the stakes of this moment. We have to provide the funding so Ukraine can keep defending itself against Putin's vicious onslaught and war crimes."

Dig deeper: Alexei Navalny, long a thorn in Russian leader Vladimir Putin's side, dies in prison

Biden calls out House Republicans for slow-balling Ukraine aid

The Kremlin denied any involvement in Navalny's death.

His death comes as Biden is imploring the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to immediately approve $60 billion in security funding for Ukraine two years into Putin’s invasion and war in Ukraine. But House Republicans aren’t on board, and Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take the foreign aid bill to the House floor for a vote, insisting it also include measures to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It's going to go down in the pages of history. It really is. It's consequential. And the clock is ticking," Biden said, calling out House Republicans for adjourning for a two-week recess before approving the foreign aid bill.

"Two weeks," said Biden, raising his voice and sounding exasperated. "They are walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My god. This is bizarre."

Biden said Navalny "bravely stood up to the corruption, the violence, all the bad things Putin’s government was doing." He commended Navalny for returning to Russia even after Putin had him poisoned and prosecuted for "fabricated crimes."

"Even all that didn't stop him from calling out Putin's lies. Even from prison, he was a powerful voice for the truth," Biden said. "He did it anyway because he believed so deeply in his country, Russia."

More: Who was Alexei Navalny? What to know about Putin's top critic who died in prison.

Johnson, in a statement, said the death of Navalny is "emblematic of Putin’s global pattern of silencing critics and eliminating opponents out of fear of dissent." But he did not commit to holding a vote on the Ukraine funding package, instead saying the U.S. "must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.”

Biden slams Trump over NATO: 'An outrageous thing for a president to say'

The U.S. relationship with its western allies has taken center stage in the presidential election after former President Donald Trump – a longtime admirer of Putin in public statements – threatened to abandon America’s commitment to NATO if Russia were to invade a NATO country.

Trump has yet to comment directly on Navalny's death. But in a statement on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said "the world has experienced Misery, Destruction, and Death" under Biden. "America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking," Trump said.

Trump last week recounted telling a foreign leader he would not come to NATO's aid if members had not made sufficient financial contributions to the alliance. He said he might hold off even if NATO members were invaded by Russia - "in fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

"We have to realize what we're dealing with with Putin," Biden said. "All of us should reject the dangerous statements made by the previous president that invited Russia to invade our NATO allies if they weren't paying up."

He added: "This is an outrageous thing for a president to say. I can't fathom. I can't fathom − from Truman on, they're rolling over in their graves hearing this."

The anecdote, in addition to drawing a forceful condemnation from Biden, angered lawmakers across the globe and revived concerns that Trump might pull the United States out of NATO if he regains the White House.

"Putin murders Navalny the same week Donald Trump invites Russia to invade Europe and MAGA (House Speaker) Mike Johnson blocks aid to Ukraine," said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. "This isn’t a coincidence, it’s the green light Putin has been given."

Trump's Republican rival Nikki Haley, former United Nations Ambassador who is trailing Trump significantly in the Republican presidential primary, seized on Trump's past remarks about Putin after Navalny's death.

"Putin did this. The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends," Haley said in a statement. "The same Trump who said: 'In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.'"

Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a statement following Navalny's death: "There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin."

What could US response to Navalny death look like?

Growing sympathy for Putin on the political right was on display last week when conservative commentator Tucker Carlson sat down with Putin for an online interview that drew widespread criticism for giving the Russian leader an open arena to push falsehoods.

“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who voted for the Ukraine funding in the Senate. “Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”

House Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told reporters Friday that he hopes Americans learn a valuable lesson from Navalny's death.

"I hope out of his death will come something, to send a message to the world and the American people about who Mr. Putin really is," he said. "His intentions are very clear to me. Just like Hitler’s were in Mein Kampf. Putin – it’s very clear, it’s to take over Ukraine."

He added that Putin won't stop there: If he is successful, he will invade other eastern European countries. "That's why, just like with Hitler, if we'd stopped him earlier, the blood and treasure we could have saved... would have been tremendous."

Despite Navalny’s profile, his death is unlikely to have much of an impact on the West’s approach to Russia or the war in Ukraine, said Michael Butler, a foreign policy expert at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

“As yet another demonstration of the Putin regime’s callous disregard for human life and intolerance of dissent it is, sadly, more of the same,” he said. “As such I’d expect a status quo response from the U.S. and its NATO allies as well.”

Regardless, Navalny’s death should be a wakeup call on the importance of sending aid to Ukraine as it enters the third year of its war with Russia, said William Pomeranz, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, a think tank dedicated to Russian and Eurasia research.

Navalny’s death bolsters Biden’s argument that Congress should send the aid to Ukraine because it’s “another reminder of Putin’s legacy and his attempts to crush civil society, and Ukraine once again is on the front lines of fighting that fight,” Pomeranz said.

The U.S. and its allies already have hit Russia with so many sanctions that imposing more probably won’t have much impact, Pomeranz said. He suggested the U.S. should establish the Alexei Navalny prize for human rights to honor his memory as “a courageous fighter for democracy and political freedom in Russia.”

Contributing: David Jackson and Riley Beggin

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alexei Navalny's death blamed on Putin: Biden