Anger and Grief as Russians in Armenia and Georgia Mourn Navalny’s Death

She said that she was worried for the fate of other political prisoners in Russia.

“Navalny felt great just yesterday; on February 12 he met his mother and looked good, joked and so on. This simply means that he was killed, like Boris Nemtsov,” she said.

Boris Nemtsov was a liberal politician and ardent critic of Vladimir Putin who was gunned down in the street near the Kremlin in Moscow in 2015.

Political reactions

Following news of Navalny’s death, Western leaders, including America’s Biden, the EU’s Charles Michel, and Germany’s Scholz, were quick to point the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Despite the growing rift between Armenia and Russia, Armenian authorities have so far remained silent, as have those in Azerbaijan.

In Georgia, President Salome Zurabishvili was quick to speak out, calling Navalny’s death a “tragedy for all democracy and human rights defenders.”

The ruling Georgian Dream party, however, were less explicit. Asked by journalists if Navalny was the latest victim of Putin, Mamuka Mdinaradze, the party’s parliamentary leader, answered that “of course” he was, before going on to speak about Georgia’s opposition.

“We should not forget that it reminds us, also very unfortunately, of the hundreds of prisoners who died in our prison before 2012,” he said.

Confronted by journalists, the speaker of parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, said only that he “cannot have any comments on this issue.”

Opposition leaders in Georgia were more outspoken.

The United National Movement issued a statement praising Navalny for returning “to fight against Putin’s dictatorship and murderous regime” despite the danger to his life. “Putin is cowardly eliminating all his political opponents, thus killing any prospects of democracy in Russia,” they wrote.

The party’s founder, former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is serving a prison sentence for abuse of power, wrote: “Navalny is gone. Am I the next one on Putin’s death row?”

“I often disagreed with him, and Putin often compared us and hated both of us equally,” he added.

The leader of the opposition Droa Party, Elene Khoshtaria, wrote on X that Navalny’s death was a “testament to the true, brutal, callous nature of #Russia and #Putin.”

Giorgi Gakharia, a former Prime Minister and now leader of the For Georgia party, expressed condolence to Navalny’s family and friends writing that his death in prison was a “poignant symbol of #Russia’s enduring modernized #totalitarianism.”

“It kills, both at home and abroad. It is danger to both human and international security,” he wrote.

(This article originally appeared on the website OC Media on February 17.)