If you saw the CNN documentary NAVALNY, you will enjoy this discussion.
NAVALNY won the 2023 Academy Award for documentary film.
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Alexei Navalny’s mother went to the penal colony in the Arctic to claim her son’s body and was lied to at every turn. The story was reported by Emma Burrows at ABC news.
For the mother of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died at age 47in an Arctic penal colony, the journey to recover her son’s body Saturday was an odyssey with no clear destination.
In the end, she didn’t get what she came for.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, received an official note Saturday stating that the politician had died in prison at 2:17 p.m. local time a day earlier, Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson said Saturday.
Together with members of Navalny’s legal team, Lyudmila traveled to the town of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region, some 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
It was there that Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said Friday that Navalny felt unwell after a walk and fell unconscious. When Lyudmila arrived less than 24 hours later, officials said that her son had died from “sudden death syndrome,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. He did not elaborate.
Navalny’s death removed the Russian opposition’s most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that will give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power.
Prison employees told Navalny’s mother Saturday that they did not have her son’s body. They said it had been taken to the nearby city of Salekhard, a little over an hour’s drive away, as part of a probe into his death.
When Lyudmila arrived in the town with one of Navalny’s lawyers, however, they found that the morgue was closed, Navalny’s team wrote on their Telegram channel. When the lawyer called the morgue, they were told that the politician’s body was not there either.
This time, Lyudmila headed directly to Salekhard’s Investigative Committee office. A small group of journalists watched as Lyudmila walked toward the office, dressed in a thick black coat as temperatures hovered close to minus 25 degrees centigrade (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). Occasionally, she took the arm of one of those walking next to her as the group made their way along paths edged with thick piles of snow.
Here, she was told that the cause of her son’s death had, in fact, not yet been established, said Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh. Officials told Lyudmila that the politician’s relatives would not receive his body until they had completed additional examinations.
Initially, it seemed as if Lyudmila might head to another morgue. Instead, she returned to her hotel in the town of Labytnangi, another 30-minute drive. Navalny’s team, meanwhile, said they were still no closer to finding out where the politician’s body was being held.
“It’s obvious that they are lying and doing everything they can to avoid handing over the body,” Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Lyudmila’s visit to the Investigative Committee office. The spokesperson also said that Navalny’s team “demand that Alexei Navalny’s body be handed over to his family immediately.”
Navalny, who had been serving a 19-year prison term since January 2021 after being convicted three times for extremism, has spoken several times about whether he might die while in custody.
After the last verdict, which Navalny believed to be politically motivated, he said that he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”
This breathtaking film, called “Putin’s Palace: The Story of the World’s Largest Bribe,” documented Vladimir Putin’s corruption. It was made by Alexei Navalny and his team and narrated by Navalny.
It shows Putin’s rise from an obscure KGB agent in Dresden to the most powerful man in Russia and —possibly—the richest man in the world.
Navalny shows that Putin’s success was propelled by corruption.
Anne Applebaum wrote about Navalny and the film in The Atlantic.
Alexei Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021. Right before he boarded the plane, he posted a film titled “Putin’s Palace: The Story of the World’s Largest Bribe” on YouTube. The video, nearly two hours long, was an extraordinary feat of investigative reporting. Using secret plans, drone footage, 3-D visualizations, and the testimony of construction workers, Navalny’s video told the story of a hideous $1.3 billion Black Sea villa containing every luxury that a dictator could imagine: a hookah bar, a hockey rink, a helipad, a vineyard, an oyster farm, a church. The video also described the eye-watering costs and the financial trickery that had gone into the construction of the palace on behalf of its true owner, Vladimir Putin.
The film was viewed, she says, by one of every four Russians.
How could Putin, a vain and bitter little man, let Navalny live after this massive insult?
Leslie Stahl interviewed Alexei Navalny when he was in Germany, having survived an attempt to kill him with a military-grade poison.
You can see why Putin was afraid of him: he was smart and charismatic, handsome and youthful. Left alone, he might have led an uprising against Putin’s dictatorship.
In October 2023, Daria Navalnaya gave a short TED talk about what she learned from her father Alexei Navalny.
She said, “I miss him every single day. I’m scared that my father won’t be able to come to my graduation ceremony or walk me down the aisle at my wedding. But if being my father’s daughter has taught me anything, it is to never succumb to fear and sadness.”
She was right. He won’t be there when she graduates from Stanford University or when she gets married.
If you listen to her 11-minute talk, you will perhaps understand why he believed he had to return to Moscow after he was hospitalized in Berlin and nearly died. He knew he would be arrested, but he couldn’t back down. He was not afraid.
I still wish he had stayed in the West and remained a thorn in Putin’s side. I wish he were alive to warn the world about the corrupt psychopath who controls Russia. But I don’t understand his heroism. I don’t have his courage.
But his daughter understands. His wife too, who spoke through her grief at the Munich Security Conference soon after learning of his death.
As Telegram exploded with the news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, his wife, Yuliya Navalnaya was in Germany — about to attend the annual Munich Security Conference surrounded by world leaders and defense officials, and within view of countless television cameras.
Navalnaya has generally sought to avoid the spotlight, to shield her two children from the fallout of her husband’s political work and to deny his tormentors in the Kremlin, including President Vladimir Putin, the satisfaction of ever seeing her cry. But as she took to the stage and delivered a dramatic, surprise statement, grief and worry were etched across her swollen face, and her eyes were tearful and blotchy.
She said she was not certain if the reports of her husband’s death were true. But, her voice trembling with fury, she said: “I want Putin, his entourage, Putin’s friends and his government to know they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family and my husband. And that day will come very soon.”
She noted that Navalny — who had spoken out forcefully against Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for reparations to be paid from Russia’s oil and gas revenue — would have wanted to be in Munich, were he in her place.
“He would be on this stage,” Navalnaya said, adding, “I want to call the world, everyone who is in this room, people around the world, to together defeat this evil. Defeat this horrible regime in Russia.”
Today is Alexei Navalny Day on this blog. I was deeply upset when I first heard about his death. I had hoped that he would somehow survive and replace Putin. He was charismatic, courageous and through all his travails, had a great sense of humor. He was handsome and had great energy. In other words, he was everything that Putin is not. Putin was never able to break him. He never stopped laughing at Putin. Even in prison, he cracked jokes. Putin had to get rid of him.
The idea that he went for a “walk” in a penal colony in the Arctic, in brutal weather, is laughable. He was in a prison, not a resort. Most of his time was spent in solitary confinement. Please read about him and watch the documentaries. Navalny was a hero and patriot in a time when heroes are rare.
He stood up to a brutal dictator and refused to be afraid. Instead, he laughed. The one thing that a vicious dictator can’t bear is to be laughed at. Putin hated him. Putin was jealous of Navalny. He had to die.
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On September 22, 2022, The Washington Post published the following essay by Alexei Navalny. Navalny was the most prominent opponent of Putin. He died a few days ago in a remote prison in the Arctic. Putin’s agents tried to poison him in 2020, but he survived. He returned to Moscow, where he was immediately arrested and jailed. While he was in prison, Russian courts added more years of imprisonment to his sentence until it became clear that he would never be released. He was a hero and a patriot. Putin murdered him.
Navalny wrote about what Russia should be after Putin was gone.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony. This essay was conveyed to The Post by his legal team. [Navalny’s prison sentence was increased by another 19 years for “extremism” while he was in prison.]
Navalny wrote:
What does a desirable and realistic end to the criminal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine look like?
If we examine the primary things said by Western leaders on this score, the bottom line remains: Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself.
This is correct, but it is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive. This is undoubtedly possible. Right now the urge for aggression is coming from a minority in Russian society.
In my opinion, the problem with the West’s current tactics lies not just in the vagueness of their aim, but in the fact that they ignore the question: What does Russia look like after the tactical goals have been achieved? Even if success is achieved, where is the guarantee that the world will not find itself confronting an even more aggressive regime, tormented by resentment and imperial ideas that have little to do with reality? With a sanctions-stricken but still big economy in a state of permanent military mobilization? And with nuclear weapons that guarantee impunity for all manner of international provocations and adventures?
It is easy to predict that even in the case of a painful military defeat, Putin will still declare that he lost not to Ukraine but to the “collective West and NATO,” whose aggression was unleashed to destroy Russia.
And then, resorting to his usual postmodern repertoire of national symbols — from icons to red flags, from Dostoevsky to ballet — he will vow to create an army so strong and weapons of such unprecedented power that the West will rue the day it defied us, and the honor of our great ancestors will be avenged.
And then we will see a fresh cycle of hybrid warfare and provocations, eventually escalating into new wars.
To avoid this, the issue of postwar Russia should become the central issue — and not just one element among others — of those who are striving for peace. No long-term goals can be achieved without a plan to ensure that the source of the problems stops creating them. Russia must cease to be an instigator of aggression and instability. That is possible, and that is what should be seen as a strategic victory in this war.
There are several important things happening to Russia that need to be understood:
First, jealousy of Ukraine and its possible successes is an innate feature of post-Soviet power in Russia; it was also characteristic of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. But since the beginning of Putin’s rule, and especially after the Orange Revolution that began in 2004, hatred of Ukraine’s European choice, and the desire to turn it into a failed state, have become a lasting obsession not only for Putin but also for all politicians of his generation.
Control over Ukraine is the most important article of faith for all Russians with imperial views, from officials to ordinary people. In their opinion, Russia combined with a subordinate Ukraine amounts to a “reborn U.S.S.R. and empire.” Without Ukraine, in this view, Russia is just a country with no chance of world domination. Everything that Ukraine acquires is something taken away from Russia.
Second, the view of war not as a catastrophe but as an amazing means of solving all problems is not just a philosophy of Putin’s top brass, but a practice confirmed by life and evolution. Since the Second Chechen War, which made the little-known Putin the country’s most popular politician, through the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and the war in Syria, the Russian elite over the past 23 years has learned rules that have never failed: War is not that expensive, it solves all domestic political problems, it raises public approval sky-high, it does not particularly harm the economy, and — most importantly — winners face no accountability. Sooner or later, one of the constantly changing Western leaders will come to us to negotiate. It does not matter what motives will lead him — the will of the voters or the desire to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — but if you show proper persistence and determination, the West will come to make peace.
Don’t forget that there are many in the United States, Britain and other Western countries in politics who have been defeated and lost ground due to their support for one war or another. In Russia, there is simply no such thing. Here, war is always about profit and success.
Third, therefore, the hopes that Putin’s replacement by another member of his elite will fundamentally change this view on war, and especially war over the “legacy of the U.S.S.R.,” is naive at the very least. The elites simply know from experience that war works — better than anything else.
Perhaps the best example here would be Dmitry Medvedev, the former president on whom the West pinned so many hopes. Today, this amusing Medvedev, who was once taken on a tour of Twitter’s headquarters, makes statements so aggressive that they look like a caricature of Putin’s.
Fourth, the good news is that the bloodthirsty obsession with Ukraine is not at all widespread outside the power elites, no matter what lies pro-government sociologists might tell.
The war raises Putin’s approval rating by super-mobilizing the imperially minded part of society. The news agenda is fully consumed by the war; internal problems recede into the background: “Hurray, we’re back in the game, we are great, they’re reckoning with us!” Yet the aggressive imperialists do not have absolute dominance. They do not make up a solid majority of voters, and even they still require a steady supply of propaganda to sustain their beliefs.
Otherwise Putin would not have needed to call the war a “special operation” and send those who use the word “war” to jail. (Not long ago, a member of a Moscow district council received seven years in prison for this.) He would not have been afraid to send conscripts to the war and would not have been compelled to look for soldiers in maximum-security prisons, as he is doing now. (Several people were “drafted to the front” directly from the penal colony where I am.)
Yes, propaganda and brainwashing have an effect. Yet we can say with certainty that the majority of residents of major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as young voters, are critical of the war and imperial hysteria. The horror of the suffering of Ukrainians and the brutal killing of innocents resonate in the souls of these voters.
Thus, we can state the following:
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The war with Ukraine was started and waged, of course, by Putin, trying to solve his domestic political problems. But the real war party is the entire elite and the system of power itself, which is an endlessly self-reproducing Russian authoritarianism of the imperial kind. External aggression in any form, from diplomatic rhetoric to outright warfare, is its preferred mode of operation, and Ukraine is its preferred target. This self-generated imperial authoritarianism is the real curse of Russia and the cause of all its troubles. We cannot get rid of it, despite the opportunities regularly provided by history.
Russia had its last chance of this kind after the end of the U.S.S.R., but both the democratic public inside the country and Western leaders at the time made the monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time.
Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin. They have caused several wars and countless international provocations, and are now tormenting a neighboring nation, committing horrible crimes for which neither many generations of Ukrainians nor our own children will forgive us.
In the 31 years since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., we have witnessed a clear pattern: The countries that chose the parliamentary republic model (the Baltic states) are thriving and have successfully joined Europe. Those that chose the presidential-parliamentary model (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) have faced persistent instability and made little progress. Those that chose strong presidential power (Russia, Belarus and the Central Asian republics) have succumbed to rigid authoritarianism, most of them permanently engaged in military conflicts with their neighbors, daydreaming about their own little empires.
In short, strategic victory means bringing Russia back to this key historical juncture and letting the Russian people make the right choice.
The future model for Russia is not “strong power” and a “firm hand,” but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society. Russia needs a parliamentary republic. That is the only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism.
One may argue that a parliamentary republic is not a panacea. Who, after all, is to prevent Putin or his successor from winning elections and gaining full control over the parliament?
Of course, even a parliamentary republic does not offer 100 percent guarantees. It could well be that we are witnessing the transition to the authoritarianism of parliamentary India. After the usurpation of power, parliamentary Turkey has been transformed into a presidential one. The core of Putin’s European fan club is paradoxically in parliamentary Hungary.
And the very notion of a “parliamentary republic” is too broad.
Yet I believe this cure offers us crucial advantages: a radical reduction of power in the hands of one person, the formation of a government by a parliamentary majority, an independent judiciary system, a significant increase in the powers of local authorities. Such institutions have never existed in Russia, and we are in desperate need of them.
As for the possible total control of parliament by Putin’s party, the answer is simple: Once the real opposition is allowed to vote, it will be impossible. A large faction? Yes. A coalition majority? Maybe. Total control? Definitely not. Too many people in Russia are interested in normal life now, not in the phantom of territorial gains. And there are more such people every year. They just don’t have anyone to vote for now.
Certainly, changing Putin’s regime in the country and choosing the path of development are not matters for the West, but jobs for the citizens of Russia. Nevertheless, the West, which has imposed sanctions both on Russia as a state as well as on some of its elites, should make its strategic vision of Russia as a parliamentary democracy as clear as possible. By no means should we repeat the mistake of the West’s cynical approach in the 1990s, when the post-Soviet elite was effectively told: “You do what you want there; just watch your nuclear weapons and supply us with oil and gas.” Indeed, even now we hear cynical voices saying similar things: “Let them just pull back the troops and do what they want from there. The war is over, the mission of the West is accomplished.” That mission was already “accomplished” with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the result is a full-fledged war in Europe in 2022.
This is a simple, honest and fair approach: The Russian people are of course free to choose their own path of development. But Western countries are free to choose the format of their relations with Russia, to lift or not to lift sanctions, and to define the criteria for such decisions. The Russian people and the Russian elite do not need to be forced. They need a clear signal and an explanation of why such a choice is better. Crucially, parliamentary democracy is also a rational and desirable choice for many of the political factions around Putin. It gives them an opportunity to maintain influence and fight for power while ensuring that they are not destroyed by a more aggressive group.
War is a relentless stream of crucial, urgent decisions influenced by constantly shifting factors. Therefore, while I commend European leaders for their ongoing success in supporting Ukraine, I urge them not to lose sight of the fundamental causes of war. The threat to peace and stability in Europe is aggressive imperial authoritarianism, endlessly inflicted by Russia upon itself. Postwar Russia, like post-Putin Russia, will be doomed to become belligerent and Putinist again. This is inevitable as long as the current form of the country’s development is maintained. Only a parliamentary republic can prevent this. It is the first step toward transforming Russia into a good neighbor that helps to solve problems rather than create them.
World leaders spoke out about the death of Alexei Navalny, who was obviously murdered on the order of Putin.
One prominent figure said nothing: Donald Trump. Trump has boasted about his friendship with Putin.
Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, was silent following news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death on Friday. Instead, his campaign referred a reporter to a statement that didn’t reference Navalny or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“In just three and a half years under Crooked Joe Biden, the World has experienced Misery, Destruction, and Death. America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking. I am the only one who can bring Peace, Prosperity, and Stability like I did during my first term. America will be respected and feared (if necessary!) again,” Trump said in the vague statement posted to Truth Social.
Nikki Haley blasted Trump.
“Putin murdered his political opponent and Trump hasn’t said a word after he said he would encourage Putin to invade our allies. He has, however, posted 20+ times on social media about his legal drama and fake polls,” Haley said on X, formerly known as Twitter, several hours after Navalny’s death was first reported.
“Putin did this. The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends,” Haley wrote in a social media post reacting to the news earlier Friday morning.
“The same Trump who said: ‘In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that,’” Haley continued, referring to comments Trump made in 2015, when he pushed back against the notion that Putin had killed journalists. Trump also praised Putin’s leadership, describing him as “a strong leader.”
Be sure to watch the CNN documentary NAVALNY tonight at 9 pm EST and midnight. It won an Academy Award as Best Documentary of 2023.
Putin has finally gotten rid of his chief opponent, Alexei Navalny. Officials announced that he died after taking a “walk” in the remote prison where he was confined.
Navalny was a strapping handsome man of 47 who bravely stood up to Putin. He previously survived an attempt to poison him, a near-death experience. Navalny recovered in a German hospital.
He could have stayed in the West and remained a free man, risking the possibility that Putin’s agents would kill him.
Instead, after his recovery, he returned to Moscow to lead the struggle against Putin. He was arrested the instant he stepped off the plane.
Navalny was repeatedly moved into solitary confinement and suffered harsh conditions. While imprisoned, his jail term was increased again and again.
Mr. Navalny was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence in February 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from being poisoned with a nerve agent the previous August. In March 2022, he received a nine-year sentence for embezzlement and fraud in a trial that international observers denounced as “politically motivated” and a “sham.” And in August 2023, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism.”
Mr. Navalny had effectively returned from the dead after his 2020 poisoning and had conducted multiple hunger strikes to improve his treatment, with many of his supporters believing him to be all but invincible.
During his detention, Mr. Navalny was repeatedly placed in solitary confinement, and complained about severe illnesses. In December, he disappeared for three weeks during his transfer to a penal colony 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Navalny was interviewed by the New York Times in 2021.
An excerpt:
What is the likelihood you will be killed in prison?
In interviews, at points like this, there’s usually a remark in parentheses (laughter). You cannot see me right now, but I assure you, I’m laughing.
For many years, I was forced to make excuses in response to questions like: “Why haven’t you been killed yet?” and “Why haven’t you been jailed?” Now that I have both these boxes checked (the one about murder with a side note: “Well, almost”), I’m asked to gauge the probability of my own death while in prison.
Well, the answer, obviously, can be taken from a joke: 50 percent. I’ll either be killed or not be killed.
Let’s not forget that we clearly have to deal with a person who has lost his mind, Putin. A pathological liar with megalomania and persecutory delusion. Twenty-two years in power would do that to anyone, and what we’re witnessing is a classic situation of a half-mad czar.
Putin is at last free of the one man who led a movement to oust him.
Please Google and watch the documentary “Navalny.” The world has lost a man of courage and principle.
Putin killed Navalny, but he never broke his spirit.
At a campaign rally in Conway, South Carolina, Donald Trump said that he met with “the president of a big country,” who asked him, “Well sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia – will you protect us?”
Trump said he responded:.
“I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said: ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay.”
European leaders were shocked by Trump’s casual dismissal of Article 5 of NATO, which binds every member nation to defend any other nation that is attacked. Since NATO was created in 1949, in response to the Soviet threat, Article 5 has been invoked only once, in aid of the United States on September 11, 2001. NATO has kept the peace, as it was meant to do. The USSR has never invaded a NATO nation, which may explain why so many former Soviet satellites weee eager to join NATO.
Thirty-one nations now belong to NATO.
Trump doesn’t understand how it works, so The Washington Post tried to explain it, in hopes that he reads it.
NATO member nations all make payments to cover the operating expenses of the organization, which was founded in the aftermath of World War II to help Western Europe counter the Soviet Union with help from Canada and the United States. But they don’t pay membership fees to remain in the alliance, so there’s no delinquency to speak of.
Countries do, however, commit to spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense each year, with the goal of ensuring the alliance’s military readiness and deterring any potential attacks. The commitment is a guideline, not a requirement, that has been in place for nearly two decades.
Last year, 11 countries met or exceeded that target, according to NATO statistics. The rest spent smaller portions of their GDP on defense. (Iceland, the only member state with no armed forces, is omitted from the data set.)
The nation that spent the most on military readiness was Poland, perhaps because of the years it was subjugated by the USSR.
Second was the United States.
The other nine that met the goal of at least 2% were: Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Latvia, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Slovakia.
The nations that Trump is offering up to Putin as targets for invasion are: France, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Slovenia, Turkey, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg. None of these countries met their 2% of GDP goal for military spending.
If you have been thinking of vacationing in any of the unprotected nations, like France, Germany, or Spain, it would be best to plan your trip in 2024. Should Trump be elected, those nations might be battlefields or Russian satellites.
I have not seen Tucker Carlson’s interview of Vladimir Putin but I’ve heard plenty about it. On Chris Wallace’s show, Bret Stephens of the New York Times called Tucker the “Tokyo Rose” of our time. Hillary Clinton, interviewed on MSNBC by Alex Wagner, said he was “a useful idiot,” a term first used by Lenin to describe the dupes who parroted Soviet propaganda.
British investigative journalist John Sweeney reviewed Tucker’s interview and was even more scathing in his reaction. John Sweeney blogs at JohnSweeneyRoars. There is more to read so open the link.
He wrote:
Two narcissists but only one looking-glass: what was so bleakly and blackly comical about the Russian strong man Vladimir Putin granting an audience to the far-right showman, Tucker Carlson, was that even the American stooge could not hide his irritation at how boring the little man in the Kremlin was. Putin sensed that annoyance and gave Carlson bitch-slap after bitch-slap.
It would have been more amusing if Carlson had tottered out but the gravity of their shared neo-fascist agenda kept the two planet-sized egos in orbit, just. However, the big reveal of the-useful-idiot-meets-serial-killer show was that the two beauties really didn’t get on. Down the track, I look forward to a leak of what Carlson really felt about Putin. Lines like: “ungrateful dwarf sonofabitch” come to the novelist in me.
Sweeney the journalist notes the glorious moment when Putin upends the conventions and attacks the supplicant for a previous job application. Putin, puffy cheeked on steroids as ever, is waxing long about the 2014 Maidan revolution when the unarmed Ukrainian opposition took to the streets to bring down Kremlin puppet President Viktor Yanukovych:
Putin: “The armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? Who do you think you are? I wanted to ask the then US leadership.
Tucker: With the backing of whom?
Vladimir Putin: With the backing of CIA, of course, the organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. We should thank God, they didn’t let you in.
Carlson looks so mortified that I wondered whether his carefully coiffed hairdo might levitate in horror, as well it might. Who would have known that this career anti-elite hobgoblin had once tried to join the Company? Well, the former head of the Russian intelligence service, for one.
I feel I am entitled to be critical of Tucker Carlson because, firstly, he is a traitor to the human soul, and, secondly, I have interviewed Putin myself. Back in 2014, after the shooting down of MH17 by a Russian BUK missile, my colleagues at BBC Panorama and I worked out that the little man in the Kremlin was going to open some museum of mammothology in Yakutsk in the far east of Siberia. I rocked up, popped my question, Putin was caught in the bright lights of the Kremlin’s patsy media cameras – they thought my popping up had official permission – and Peskov, his PR man, was embarrassed. A few hours a goon came and punched me in the stomach. The Kremlin didn’t like my question. Still, I got off lightly.
Carlson’s interview set out several things about Putin to his core audience of ignorant white Americans who don’t like the twenty-first century (although they have been pretty clear to some of us for two decades, more): that Putin is boring, very; that he is nasty, very; that he is used to getting his own way to a pathological extent; that he is a liar; that he is incapable of explaining why he has invaded Ukraine in simple terms that make sense because he can’t.
Carlson wanted so little from the Russian dictator but the pleonexic couldn’t bring himself to be the least bit generous. Pleonexia is a term first applied to Putin by the great Kremlin-watcher Masha Gessen, meaning: having an irresistible urge to take things that rightfully belong to another. I wrote a whole chapter of my book, Killer In The Kremlin, on Putin’s craving to take from others: objects, countries, yes and yes, but also the time of others too. Putin turned up late for our departed Queen, late for the King of Spain, late for the Pope and four and a half hours late, of course, for then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. So Carlson should not have been the least bit surprised that Putin stole his time, wasting the precious first half hour of the interview by setting out a dark fairy story that history showed that Russia has a right to repress Ukraine.
How can I best summarise Putin’s case? He was talking bollocks, total bollocks. The evolution of Ukraine and then Russia – Kyiv was a well-organised citadel in the tenth century when Moscow was still a few sticks in a bog – is messy and complicated. But the modern world started in 1945 and rule number one, in Europe at least, was that no country should invade another. Nothing whatsoever from the past trumps that. Full stop.
One other Putin comment which will drive up the Polish defence budget by another five percentage points was that the Poles somehow brought on 1939 themselves, that they should have negotiated with Hitler. What? Hello?
Carlson is a great showman, his glands unctuous, his tongue fluent but he is also a profoundly stupid man who even failed to get a degree from the rich kid’s diploma factory his family money sent him to. I didn’t expect him to challenge Putin on the Russian’s fairytale history lesson but there is one simple thing that even a very thick CIA reject should have cottoned on to. One of Putin’s beefs about Ukraine is that their leaders are Nazi. President Zelenskiy is Jewish. Hello?
OK, let me break this down in a simple way by telling a true story of just how un-Nazi Ukraine is, from my own personal experience. At the height of the Battle of Kyiv, when the Russian army was twelve miles away from the city centre, I got a call from the Jewish Chronicle in London, inviting me to be their stringer. I explained that I wasn’t Jewish. They replied that they knew but there was no-one else. I said yes because it struck me as funny to work for a Jewish paper in a country the Kremlin said was Nazi. I got to hang out with the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, to see Jewish aid relief to the front lines of Ukraine, to talk to soldiers who were Jewish – and also Muslim and Christian and those with no faith. The one thing I have not seen is strong evidence of Ukraine being Nazi. Because it isn’t.
All Carlson had to do was say: “but Mr Putin, how could Ukraine be Nazi if the President is Jewish?”
He did nothing of the kind. Carlson’s commitment to the cause, some kind of lower case Fascist International, was greater than his nous. But we knew that, didn’t we?
The worry remains that Carlson’s core audience will, once again, place their prejudices above their ability to weigh evidence. That is what the political religion they call MAGA does. What we all saw is a thoroughly horrible human being with a closed mind meeting the President of Russia. The latter, it turns out, is also a thoroughly horrible human being with a very closed mind and a bore – a crushing one at that.
Open the link and read on.
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