Front Burner - Poison, pranks, prison: The making of ‘Navalny’

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

When Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, was poisoned in 2020, he was relocated to Germany to recover. While he was there, he teamed up with a Bulgarian data-journalist named Christo Grozev, who claimed he had figured out who was behind the assassination attempt. Together, using advanced prank call technology, they managed to get an admission of guilt from a member of the team tasked with poisoning Navalny. There to capture it all was Canadian documentarian Daniel Roher. The resulting film, Navalny, is an up-close look at Navalny’s final months as a free man. Today on Front Burner, a conversation with Roher on what it was like to document Russia’s most famous political opposition leader as he recovered from an assassination attempt and made the decision to return to the country he wants to lead.

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. So yesterday in Moscow, armored vehicles and soldiers dressed in regalia paraded through Red Square to mark the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany. Vladimir Putin delivered a defiant speech,

thanking the Russian army for fighting battles past and present and blaming the West for what has transpired in Ukraine. NATO began active military development of the territories adjacent to ours. This was an absolutely unacceptable threat, systematically created for us and right on our borders. For all the symbols of national unity on display Monday, the opposition was also taking their stand. Two Russian journalists working for a popular pro-Kremlin website filled it with anti-war articles, and the Russian ambassador

to Poland was doused in red paint by protesters at a Victory Day commemoration in Warsaw, Poland. These examples are small acts of defiance. However, there is arguably no greater current embodiment of opposition to the Russian regime than Alexei Navalny. Navalny was poisoned back in 2020 and then arrested when he returned to Russia after recovering from the near-death experience in Germany. Today on FrontBurner, we're talking to Daniel Rohr, the Canadian director of the upcoming HBO Max and CNN Films documentary Navalny, which chronicles the opposition leader and anti-corruption activists as he recovered in Germany after being poisoned and the incredible investigation

to find out who wanted him dead. Hey, Daniel, it is great to have you. Jamie, it's great to be here with you. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for coming on. So I wonder if we could start here. When did you begin filming with Navalny? And how did you get involved in the project in the first place? I was making a completely different film with a few of my colleagues, one of whom was a Bulgarian investigative journalist named Christo Grozev, who works for this sort of international investigative website called Bellingcat. And Christo was working on the case of who poisoned Alexei Navalny when he told me that he had been making some progress and had a breakthrough. And he was going to go to Navalny

with this information that he had discovered. I immediately understood that that would be an extraordinary film project. If you can get in the war and endear yourself to the leader of the Russian opposition as he's recovering from an assassination attempt, that could be a really unique film project. And so when Christo reached out to Navalny and said that I have a lead into this investigation into who tried to poison you, Navalny was all ears. And Christo was also able to say, and by the way, I'm with these filmmakers who think a documentary would be a good idea. He and his team had already been thinking about the possibility or the viability of a documentary project. And then it just became, it was my job to convince him and to pitch him on why it should be me, and why it would be so important for us to start immediately. And that was in November of 2020.

I think I first met Alexei on November 10th, 11th and 12th, after he woke up from his coma after being poisoned with Novichok. And I want to come back to Christo in a little bit in our conversation because he is another really fascinating character in your documentary. But when you met Navalny for the first time, what did you make of him? You know, Jamie, it's funny. My last film was a music documentary, and I got to interview some extraordinary artists in that film, like Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen.

And so I am used to being around high-profile people, and I don't typically err on the side of starstruck or getting nervous. I'm normally pretty calm, cool, and collected. But there was something about the energy of being around this global figure who survived this assassination attempt. This is like the man who lived, who Putin couldn't kill, that just gave him a presence and a stature in the room that I was a bit intimidated by at first and I was a bit nervous to meet him, but his warmth and his charm was really disarming. So it didn't take long before I was at ease and he and I sort of had a good rapport from the very beginning. With all that said, he is not free from controversy.

And this is something that you do actually confront him on in the documentary. Early in his career, he had ties to the extreme right in Russia. Specifically, he appeared and spoke at the Russian March in 2011. This is like this annual event in Russia marking National Unity Day, where it's really quite common to see people throwing Nazi salutes and shouting nationalist slogans. And you asked him about it in the documentary. And what was that like? And what did he have to say about that? Well, Jamie, this is a man who ultimately is seeking the

presidency of the biggest country in the world. And so we must scrutinize every element of his past, especially elements that are really complicated and uncomfortable. At the end of the day, what Alexei speaks to in the film is that his number one mission is to build a broad-based coalition to defeat this regime, to defeat this pattern of authoritarianism that has gripped his nation for, you know, hundreds of years. He wants to install democracy in Russia, a democratic tradition enshrined in a constitution. And his political calculation is that in order to do that, he must unify every element of opposition to Putin. I cannot just ignore the huge part of it. Well, there are a lot of people who

call themselves nationalists. I am totally fine to sit with the guy whose rally looks kind of not very good for me. That's a political calculation he made. And I felt very strongly that I could simultaneously disagree with the political calculus and feel deeply uncomfortable about that political decision, but understand why he made it. And I think at the end of the day, it is Alexei Navalny's ability to speak to anybody,

to have conversations with all political stripes that is, as he says in the film, his political superpower. I want to talk about now the catalyst of your film. In august 2020 navalny traveled to tomsk and in siberia people will probably remember this um and he traveled there i know to make this film about corruption but then on the plane he falls very ill and they have to make this crazy emergency landing and he's rushed to this hospital in omsk and he stays there for a bit and then he's transferred to berlin and it was it was determined that he'd been poisoned with Novichok and this is a poison that can pretty much go

undetected in the victim after a certain amount of time so it is great for killing someone with a high profile and so when you were in Germany in the aftermath of all of this as Navalny was recovering what was the reaction like in his camp to this revelation that he had indeed been poisoned by Novichok? Well, I think he was simultaneously shocked. It's sort of unbelievable to conceive of yourself being poisoned by a chemical weapon. But at the same time, it's totally unsurprising. He didn't just decide to murder him, but to poison. And not just to poison, but exactly as Novichok is, like really, like leaving a signature on a crime scene.

Vladimir Putin has used murder to solve his problems, his political problems, for many years. But I think for Alexei and his team, it was still shocking because Alexei had this thought, which now we can say is very naive, but he had this idea that he was of such high stature and occupied such a sort of celebrity in Russia that they wouldn't dare poison him or kill him. But of course, we now know that to be foolish. That's exactly what they tried to do. And the conceit of murdering with poison is to give the killers a plausible deniability.

If you shoot somebody, you have a body with a hole in it and you have to account for that and explain for it. But if you use a chemical weapon, the conceit is that the poison leads the system. And you can say how sad Navalny died of a heart attack or of a stroke. And you always have that deniability. There'll be conspiracy theories, but the government, the murderers themselves can always deny their involvement. So I think it was simultaneously quite shocking and totally unsurprising when Navalny learned that he was poisoned with Novichok.

I think this brings us back to Christo Grozev, the journalist that you talked about earlier with Bellingcat. And I wonder, just for people listening, if you could tell us a little bit more about who he is exactly and then how he pieced these pieces together, trying to figure out who was behind this, this poisoning. So Christo Grozev is a Bulgarian investigative journalist in the film, Alexei Navalny refers to him as a Bulgarian nerd with a laptop. A man who is sort of a genius. He speaks about 10 languages. He sort of has this Sherlock Holmes for the digital era air. When I first met him,

I had no understanding of his significance, his prominence, who he was or what he did. But I quickly understood that this was someone who had a very unique mind. And what Christo is able to do is leverage Russian corruption against itself. And what I mean when I say that is that in Russia, every element of the system is rotted by corruption, which means you can actually purchase on a black market, a digital black market, information and data. So for example, every time we turn on our cell phone, we make a phone call, there's a digital trace that that phone call was made, the duration of the call, geotagged to where we were, who we spoke to. When you sign

up for a doctor's appointment and you make that appointment online, there's a digital trace. When you book a plane ticket, there's a flight manifesto, there's a passenger log. And in a Western country like Canada, we have digital privacy laws that protects that information and the sovereignty of our digital identities is protected. But in Russia, there are no such laws. And so you can actually purchase cell phone data of anyone in the country, including the men who manufacture the poison that's used to murder political dissidents. And that's exactly what Christo did. Once he was able to pinpoint where the poison was manufactured, he was able to tell who was in charge of this facility, and he was able to purchase all of their phone records for the weeks preceding and after the Navalny assassination

attempt. And based on those records, he was able to create a broader web of numbers and names and individuals who were likely involved with the Navalny assassination. And it's one thing to put together this sort of forensically detailed map using data to put together the plan of the murder, it's quite another to literally speak to one of the members of the kill team who confirms every detail of your investigation, which transpires in the film. I remember reading about this moment, right? Like where Navalny calls one of the members of the kill teams with Daniel, it is like a whole nother ballgame to watch this play out in your documentary. Tell me about what it was, it was like to actually be in the room while this is while this is

happening. Well, I remember quite clearly clearly the night before we shot that scene i asked cristo what are the odds that this is meaningful alexei had this conceit that he wanted to call up the members of his kill team and sort of prank them try and fool them and pretend to be somebody else using a caller id and And Krista said, you know, don't get your hopes up. Tomorrow, we will make this call. Honestly, I don't think it will work because, well, F is B, guys. They're supposed to be resistant to pranks. So I thought, okay, maybe it'll be an interesting set piece.

And we started shooting that morning. And one by one, each guy that we got on the phone just hung up, hung up, hung up. And towards the end, Christo said, why don't we call one of the scientists, Konstantin Kudratsev, who's a chemical weapons expert, whose job is to go into the crime scene after the murder, the attempted murder is committed and clean up the evidence, destroy any traces of this chemical attack. And so Alexei calls this man up. Hello? Constantin. And I remember clocking out of the corner of my eye this one moment when Maria Pevchik, who is Alexei's chief investigator, her jaw seems to unhinge and hit the floor in this expression of absolute shock. in this expression of absolute shock.

And then I peered over at Christo, who's normally quite reserved and steely and doesn't emote much. And he similarly, his face is awash with this expression of absolute disbelief. And in that moment, even though I didn't speak a word of Russian, I understood exactly what was happening and that the guy on the other end of the phone

took the bait and what Alexei was extracting from him was valuable clandestine information into the plot to murder him. And it was absolutely stunning and I remember sitting and just making sure I had enough battery in the camera, there was enough room on the memory cards and we just kept shooting. Oh my fucking god! He's not a muscle, he's a chemist. He's a scientist. He's a chemist. Yes. Spilled the whole story. This is unbelievable. Poor guy. Poor guy. They will kill him. They will kill him. Literally. I think he'll be president. Seriously. Seriously. In the Dragon's Den,

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I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. After all of this, like confronting the guy, one of the guys that was in on this plot to murder him, knowing for a fact that this attempt was made on his life, I guess I'll just put the disclaimer in here that the Kremlin has denied any knowledge of this. But Navalny is so intent in this documentary on going back to Russia. And he says that he has to go back to change his country. He wants Putin out as president. And from what you witnessed, like, does he ever talk about not maybe not going going back so soon?

maybe not going back so soon. Not for a second. Alexei Navalny's resolve is superhuman. I don't want these, you know, groups of killers exist in Russia. I don't want Putin being president. I don't want him being czar of Russia. I want to go back and try to change it.

Anyone else, any normal person would be frightened to go back, understanding the risks to your life, the risks to your well-being and your freedom. Alexei understood these risks, but he had to go back. He frames himself as the moral leader of his nation. He frames himself as the leader of the opposition. And he projects himself to be the future leader of the nation. And for him, there was no other option but to go back. And so we watched as his plane flew home. We watched as the Kremlin flailed around trying to figure out what to do with the plane as they shut down the airspace around Moscow and kept his flight for 30 minutes in a holding pattern over the city, trying to determine what to do with it.

And we watched as he landed and was quickly detained. None of us were surprised by any of this. I don't think Alexei was surprised by any of this. But whether you agree with Navalny's politics or not, whether you can look past some of the challenging elements of his past, it's impossible not to admire his courage. And I think what Alexei is trying to tell his fellow Russians is that we don't have to be afraid. he's trying to offer a different vision for his nation, one that is forged in the democratic traditions with freedom of speech and a rule of law that is enshrined in a constitution. This is something that the Russian people have not experienced yet. And what he's trying to envision is this future nation. And I think in his calculus, he needed to go back in order to be a credible leader

of his nation. That said, one of the more shocking visuals of the movie comes near the end when we see this brief video of Navalny in prison. His head is shaved. He looks really thin and not necessarily well. And it did make me wonder, do you think his imprisonment has strengthened or weakened the opposition in Russia? Well, Jamie, I think there is a lot of power to being a political prisoner.

I think Alexei Navalny will continue to occupy a space in the global consciousness. I think his name will be synonymous with this political injustice. And I think that if he stayed out of Russia, if he was in Vilnius or Vienna or Berlin, trying to command the conscience of the nation, he simply wouldn't be able to. But at the same time, a very, very, very dark cloud has descended over Russia. Part of it is because of this war. Part of it is because of the effort of the Kremlin to just completely destroy any independent press or independent thought. And it's tough to say whether Alexei made the right decision or not. I don't know. That's a decision. The decision to go back was made between him and his higher power and his family.

The decision to go back was made between him and his higher power and his family. But what I can speak to is the incredible resilience of Alexei Navalny and his colleagues. The work that they set out to do is continuing. Navalny built an organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, that is bigger than he is, that continues to operate. And so the work marches on despite Alexei's very dire situation. And I think that speaks to his political genius in a way. He can build an organization that's truly bigger than he is. And I'm glad that you mentioned his family because I did want to ask you before we go today, we haven't talked yet about his wife, Yulia, and his two kids who are all in the film. They're incredibly stoic and calm and impressive during the whole documentary.

And I wonder, do you know how his family is now and how they're involved in keeping his fight alive even though he is in prison? I've been very fortunate through the experience of rolling out this film and promoting it to get to spend some time with Yulia, Alexei's wife, and Dasha, his daughter. And their personal courage and strength is certainly just as extraordinary as Alexei's.

It takes a very special family to support the work that Alexei Navalny is doing. And his family supports him unconditionally. I know that it's really hard for his wife and children. About a month and a half ago or two months ago, Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison. And I think that was a really tough day for Yulia and the children. It's clear to them that their husband and their father is going to be away for a very long time. And that's not easy. But at the same time, they understand that what is at stake is the freedom of their nation and the future of their country, not just

for them, but for their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren. And I think that the stakes couldn't be clearer. And because of those stakes and the moral clarity of this issue, they support their husband and father with an ironclad resolve. Daniel, I want to thank you very much for this. And thank you for this documentary. It's great. And I hope I hope people watch it. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's really cool to be on the program. I'm a big fan. So thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks so much. All right.

That is all for today. I'm J.B. Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.