Putin Must Be Stopped | Opinion

Russian President Vladimir Putin finally succeeded in killing opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Putin has been trying to do this for many years. Navalny represented an alternative to Putin's murderous and criminal regime—to our status quo—for millions of Russians. His agents almost killed Navalny in 2020, using chemical warfare toxins. And Putin was slowly killing Navalny ever since he returned to Russia, after his recovery. As a sadist, Putin chose to subject Navalny to three years of torturous conditions before finally murdering him.

As Putin was torturing Navalny, he was killing the hope for a new democratic Russia. Putin has ultimately been trying to kill the future, if it is not shaped in his image. He has already caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people—Ukrainians, Russians, Georgians, Chechens, and many others.

But days earlier, in his recent two-hour propaganda rant to Tucker Carlson covered widely by global media, Putin expressed sympathy to Adolf Hitler, whom "Poland forced to start World War II" by refusing to give to Hitler its territories. Putin was sympathizing with Hitler for a simple reason: he had become the Hitler of the present.

The brutal three-year long public murder of Navalny is yet another indication of the irreversible nature of the transformation of Putin's regime into a state waving terror domestically and internationally.

As an ethnic Russian, I'm disgusted with the unprovoked aggressive wars waged by my country of birth on the people of independent Ukraine. I have been actively supporting Ukraine since 2014, when Russia waged an unprovoked aggressive, and criminal war against it.

Two years ago, international media documented my $1,000,000 bounty put forward for Putin's arrest, suggesting that he should go to trial for war crimes. If a thousand business people follow my example, it will amount to a billion dollars and the warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his arrest may finally be executed.

If not stopped, if the threat Putin continues to pose to his own people, let alone the world, go on unabated, he can cause the death of billions. He has the means to do it, with no moral or other restraints.

Predictably, Putin put me on his list of targets. His agents, the Soviet Committee of State Security (KGB)/Federal Security Service (FSB), are still trying to hunt me down around the world. Being an enemy of the criminal Russian state is nothing new to me. For years, I was one of Russia's most wanted.

I'm not alone in this process. Putin's list of "enemies of the state" includes the best people of Russia in my view, including the most famous writers, musicians, actors, journalists, attorneys, scientists, and even the World Wildlife Fund. Among us, the list would go on to include a Nobel Prize winner, a former prime minister, unequivocally the most famous Russian writer, and a former World Chess champion.

Want to speak out? Facebook and Instagram are banned in Russia as "extremist," and many have been jailed for protesting the war. Putin's regime puts people in jail for social media likes, or for holding a blank sheet of paper.

The European Parliament has declared Russia to be a state sponsor of terrorism. A number of countries and the U.S. Senate would go on to second this decision. And for these reasons and more, I'm grateful to the United States of America for the political asylum granted to me after my defection from Russia in 1991.

And in 2024, I don't regret being Putin's enemy. I'd find it disgusting how anyone could be his ally.

Alex Konanykhin was formerly Russia's richest entrepreneur and "Russia's Most Wanted" defector.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.