Front Burner - Alexei Navalny, the 'anti-Putin'

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and across Russia to demand the release of prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny this past weekend. Police used force to break up the protests and detained more than 2,500 people. Navalny is best known for his anti-corruption investigations and was recently the subject of an assassination attempt. After recovering from his poisoning in Germany, Navalny returned to Russia only to be arrested and imprisoned in Moscow. CBC Russia correspondent Chris Brown talks to host Jayme Poisson about the growing movement in support of Navalny, and whether it might actually challenge President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power in Russia.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. This was an angry crowd. They were very serious.

Putin resign. Putin's a thief. Free Navalny. Putin, Putin, Putin! Putin, war! Putin, war! Putin, war! And people came. There wasn't a lot of laughing. There wasn't a lot of singing. They knew that anyone who showed up could be treated harshly by the security services, and they might even end up in jail for coming. So that's my colleague Chris Brown, the CBC's Russia correspondent.

And on Saturday, he was in central Moscow observing the thousands of protesters who had braved the cold and police warnings to show support for the imprisoned Alexei Navalny. Chris has covered a lot of protests in the region, some are even about Navalny. But he says that this one felt different. region, some were even about Navalny, but he says that this one felt different. Once the riot police kind of got involved and began to try to disperse things and push the crowd back, a lot of people fought back. There's quite a well-known, well-viewed video out there now of a row of riot police being pelted with snowballs. That was quite remarkable.

I saw actual fistfights and people jumping on police, you know, something I hadn't seen before. And I think that all speaks to the fact that this wasn't just a traditional Navalny crowd, the supporters, the sort of left-leaning liberals, the Western-leaning liberals. This was quite a cross-section of very angry Russians who are fed up, fed up with corruption, fed up with declining living standards, and fed up with the rule of law being interpreted exactly how the Kremlin wants, not a justice system as we know it. interpreted exactly how the Kremlin wants, not a justice system as we know it. Today, we talked to Chris about the growing protest movement in Russia to support Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin's most high-profile critic, and what it might mean for Putin's hold on the country. Navalny! Navalny!

Can we talk a little bit more about why people were so angry? You know, I know that there was this video that Navalny released that has now gotten, you know, tens of millions of views online. It's called Putin's Palace, and can you talk to me a little bit about that? So this, in some ways, was a little bit of a surprise. You know, there was the drama last weekend, last Sunday, when Navalny stepped off the plane and was promptly arrested. He came back from Germany, knew he would be arrested, and of course the Russian authorities waited all of five minutes

before they took him into custody. A kiss goodbye for his wife Yulia. Then the Kremlin's fiercest critic was led away. But then Navalny had a surprise of his own. He came out with this two-hour-long video investigation, meticulously going through this huge, opulent $1.35 billion palace on the banks of the Black Sea that he claims was built for Vladimir Putin by all his cronies. This was very dramatic. Navalny went through and traced money that came from people that Putin had worked with when he was a KGB agent back in East Germany, back before the fall of the Soviet Union. He really followed the money trail.

And they illustrated this investigation with all kinds of photographs, not actual photographs of what was inside the palace, but photographs of what it probably looked like. After making sure that our architectural plans are absolutely accurate and reliable, we ordered a 3D visualization and recreated all the interiors. And that really drove a lot of viewers as well.

And they honed in on things like the fact that they found receipts for like $800 toilet scrubbing brushes. And that kind of thing, that kind of opulence, that kind of waste, really became a theme. In fact, I saw people carrying toilet brushes all Saturday all around this protest, again, as a symbol of extravagance that they hate. Right, right. And do you think it's fair to say that this video, the contents of this video, helped propel some of the anger that you saw? The other part, of course, being Navalny being in Russian custody, right?

There's no question. This was a huge draw, a huge driver. It reached far beyond Navalny's traditional base. And it captured people that either didn't really like him before or didn't really know about him before. But this kind of waste of this extreme, I mean, everyone knows there's corruption in Russia. A deal gets done and someone high up gets a percentage of the money. It is the way business is done here.

It's not good, it's not right, but people accept that some of it happens. But when it's smeared right in your face, that is what really, I think, added the extra adrenaline to what happened on Saturday. I understand Putin actually responded to this video on Monday. Am I right about that? You are very unprecedented. He was taking questions from school kids by video conference and a kid actually asked him about this, and he kind of fidgeted a bit, and he said, well, that's not mine, I don't own it, and not only me, but no one in my family does as well.

That's unprecedented. Putin never mentions Alexei Navalny by name. He never talks about him. Putin never mentions Alexei Navalny by name. He never talks about him. He has refused to suggest that he has any kind of credibility at all, that no one supports him. And so for Putin to actually address one of Alexei Navalny's investigations shows just perhaps how much the Kremlin has been rattled by this.

This information, by the way, has been stirred up for more than 10 years already. Now it's just a good opportunity. So they put everything together and decided to wash our citizens' brains with those materials. And I want to get into that a little bit more with you in a minute. But first, just to stay with the protests, I know there were quite a few arrests, I think upwards of 2,000 people, including Navalny's wife, Yulia, who was briefly held. And then there were other arrests of prominent Navalny supporters too, right? a top press spokesperson, his top organizer, his top organizers, in fact, practically in every city across Russia that has a top Navalny organizer, was arrested. His lawyer, who is actually a Belarusian, was also arrested.

And then he was driven by Russian security forces to the border of Belarus and dumped on the other side and banned from coming back into Russia for five years. So that just goes to show how much the Kremlin has tried to decapitate Navalny's movement, first by taking Navalny himself out of play, by putting him in jail, or at least trying to take him out of play, and on the backstory because, of course, there are allegations that Putin tried to take Navalny out permanently. Allegations that he was poisoned by Novichok. And of course, there is even this recording of a phone call that Navalny had with his alleged poisoner, which is really quite stunning. And Chris, can you remind us of what we know concretely now about what happened then? Well, but the only facts I would say that both sides agree on is that Navalny was leaving a city in Siberia, Tomsk. He got on an airplane and he collapsed and he almost died. And the pilot landed the aircraft quickly and a team of paramedics got to him.

They administered atropine. They all thought he was poisoned. And sure enough, it saved his life. And then the German government arranged and offered to look after him. They sent in a medevac for him, brought him back to Berlin's Charité Hospital, where they really nursed him back to life. And that's probably the only thing that both sides agree on. Subsequently, the journalism collective Bellingcat, they did just an absolutely incredible piece of journalism,

tracking the movements of a large number of FSB officers who had been following Navalny, tracing their phone calls back to one man who had overseen the Soviet Union's Novichok program, culminating with, as you say, Navalny calling one of the alleged assassins himself, recording the conversation and getting that man to admit that, yes, he was in charge of trying to clean up the evidence of Novichok after Navalny survived by going into his room and getting it out of his clothing. If he had flown a little longer,

and perhaps would not have landed so quickly and all, perhaps it would have all gone differently. That is, had it not been for the prompt assistance of doctors or ambulances on the landing strip and so on. Of course, the Russians, the Russian government says it's all, in their words, a fable. They believe, they're saying, whether they believe it or not, I don't know, but what they're saying is that this was the work of Western spy agencies, the United States. But it's a strange argument to make because they've always said that Navalny himself was a spy.

So why would a spy agency try to kill their own asset? None of the Russian side of it makes sense. And I think what is notable now is that a great many people who have seen Navalny's investigation on YouTube, they don't believe the Russian line either. Right. And, you know, of course, he's back in Russia now. He returned from Germany last week, like you mentioned. There were these images of him, I remember last week on the plane, being photographed like a rock star. And then of course, he was arrested upon landing. And what do we know about the conditions that Navalny is living in right now? Well, he's in the Matryoshka Tashina prison. It's a bad place. It's a place where they put the worst of the worst. 12 square meters, that's the size of a

cell, guarded 24 hours a day. Navalny, you know, has been so concerned about what might happen to him there. I find this very grim. He actually sent a message out with his lawyer the other day saying, look, my heart is in great shape. I'm very, very healthy. And I'm, you know, my spirits are good, too. I'm not going to commit suicide. Clearly wanting to, you know, suggest to people that if I die in here, it's not because I took my own life. It's because someone had me killed. What is Russia saying about the reason why he's in prison? So they're saying that he is a criminal, essentially, that this man has committed multitude of crimes, embezzlement, fraud, and particularly why he's in jail now is because he violated the terms of parole.

Particularly why he's in jail now is because he violated the terms of parole. Now, this was a case that the European Court of Human Rights said was unfairly brought. They felt it didn't have merit, but the Russians pursued it and they gave him a suspended sentence for it. So after his assassination attempt, he was in Germany, unable to fulfill the terms of his parole from this, couldn't check in with a corrections officer. So this is why they've gone to arrest him. So it's bizarre. It's awful. But these are the reasons why they were able to put him in jail. And there's going to be another hearing about this later this week.

Do you think there's a scenario in which he will get out of prison anytime soon? I don't know how much his chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, and other supporters actually believe these protests or this protest Saturday is actually going to get him out of jail. I think their hope is eventually, if they go on long enough, the Kremlin may either perhaps give him a shorter jail term than they might have otherwise. But I think Navalny, his wife, his family, and everyone who knows him have kind of resigned themselves that this is the way it's going to be. And you do hear the whole Nelson Mandela kind of comparison from

time to time. I don't know how far you want to go with that, but I do think they're thinking in terms of years of a struggle, not just days or months. OK, I know that global players are starting to get involved here. Canada has expressed deep concern over the detention of protesters and Navalny. More notably, though, we did see the Biden administration take a strong stance on this, calling on Russian authorities to release those detained. And the arrest of opposition figure Alexei Navalny and the crackdown on protests that followed are troubling indications of further restrictions on Russian civil society. So I'll just reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of Alexei Navalny. What effect do you think that they could have on how the Kremlin deals with this moving forward? I think it will have no effect whatsoever. I think the Russian government

has dealt with sanctions and condemnation and all sorts of verbal rebukes over the last number of years over everything from cheating at the Olympics to taking over Crimea, they're very used to this. And really, it's the security services to me that seem to be calling a lot of the shots on what happens at street level. And in particular, I don't really think they care. So I think the government here sees any sort of giving in to Navalny or giving in to Western pressure as a sign of weakness. And I don't see it happening. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Just to sort of pick up on this, you know, I can't help but thinking about the many conversations that you and I have had over the last couple years about Putin's stronghold on power in Russia, from the way that he uses the media, to how he's bolstered Russian oligarchs, to how he's changing laws, literally, so that he can stay in power for longer. There are already calls for more protests this weekend. Chris, besides these smaller gestures that might happen, what would it take for Navalny and this movement to actually pose a real threat

to Putin's stranglehold on power? So people do talk about the Belarus scenario. That's what has been happening for the last six months in Russia's eastern neighbour, much smaller eastern neighbour. There were rigged elections there, and basically every weekend since the summer, people have been out. In some cases, 100,000 people have been out to protest that.

Authorities responded with extreme violence. As we look at all of these people, the question they're beginning to have to face up to, and that there isn't really a clear answer to yet, is how this becomes the toppling of the regime. Now, while it's shaken the government of Alexander Lukashenko, it has not toppled him. And I think some of Navalny's supporters see that as the model going forward,

that it is going to take a very sustained amount of pressure, like large crowds in the street, in order to force any kind of change. You know, no one here expects that, you expects that Vladimir Putin is going to go. He's in a very strong position. The Russian state is well equipped to handle demonstrators. Russia is much richer and not as economically vulnerable, for example, to Western sanctions as what Belarus is. is what Belarus is. So the end game, obviously, for Navalny is to dislodge Putin. That could happen through elections. There are elections coming up in September. His United Russia Party is going to have to go to try to get re-elected in Russia's parliament. And if there are sizable losses at that point, then that may further change the, you know, electoral dynamic

here. And beyond that, of course, 2024 is when his current term expires and people are waiting for a sign of what he's going to do then. Is he going to run again as he changed the Constitution to allow himself to do, or will that be it? And he keeps his cards, obviously, extremely close to his chest. And just one last question, you know, what about the story of Navalny? You know, this is a guy who allegedly got poisoned with a nerve agent, and now he has returned to the country that allegedly poisoned him. And so I wonder if it could be different this time around, if the narrative around this guy is so powerful, or is that just a really naive way of looking at it? Well, so Russian commentators kind of roll their eyes at a lot of people in

the West, and some of it is with good reason. Navalny has had views that would not be considered acceptable certainly in countries like Canada or even the UK. He's appeared at times to side with far-right groups. He's made anti-immigrant comments, anti-Muslim comments, and that would make him not a particularly savoury person for a Western country to back. On the other hand, he has been very clear and very equivocal about his support for democracy, about his support for free elections, and about his support to root out corruption. And it's also unclear how much Navalny's views have changed politically.

Some of those comments I said are more than 10, even 15 years old. So Navalny himself as a politician is a little bit of an unknown. He's seen here largely as an investigative journalist. The Kremlin writes him off as a blogger. He's making a huge move with this to try to become much more of a pan-Russian figure, much more of someone who is directly challenging Vladimir Putin, the anti-Putin, effectively. And I think already we've seen that transformation happen. All right, Chris Brown, thank you so much. Hey, thanks, Jamie. all right so a canadian news update before we go today senator lynn bayak has resigned she was appointed in 2013 and came under fire in 2017 for arguing that Canada's residential school system was, quote, well-intentioned. Bayak has also refused to remove

letters containing derogatory comments against Indigenous peoples from her website. Despite the fact that thousands of Indigenous children have suffered abuse and died at residential schools, Bayak still stands by her comments. She made that clear in her resignation announcement on Monday. If you want to know more about the story, we did an episode with my colleague J.P. Tasker a while back on this. You can find it in our feed. I'm Jamie Poisson.

Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.