Russia’s war in Ukraine

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s aides said Monday they “achieved a decision on his exchange” in a prisoner swap while he was still alive and imprisoned in a penal colony. 

Maria Pevchikh, one of Navalny’s closest advisers said on social media that “in early February, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin was offered to exchange Vadim Krasikov, a killer and an FSB officer who is serving a sentence for murder in Berlin, for two American citizens and Alexey Navalny.”

Krasikov was arrested in Berlin in 2019 for the murder of a Chechen militant in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Pevchikh said that Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and former owner of Chelsea Football Club, “delivered the proposal to swap Navalny.”

She added that he was acting as “an informal negotiator communication with American and European officials.”

Pevchikh however, added that when she approached Abramovich about the details of: how, when and what circumstances he supplied the information to the President, he “did not answer these questions, but he did not deny anything either.” 

Pevchikh said that they “were at the final stage on the evening of February 15th.”

Navalny died in prison on February 16. 

CNN cannot independently verify these claims, and German government spokesperson, Christiane Hoffmann, said that she “cannot give a comment about this at this stage,” in answer to a question about the prisoner exchange reports.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he knew “nothing about such an agreement,” in response to a question from CNN’s Matthew Chance about the alleged prisoner exchange.