Morning Wire - Murder in Moscow | 4.24.22

Episode Date: April 24, 2022

With the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been declared an enemy of the world, and even a war criminal, but some argue Putin’s record of violence, deception, and a mysterious trail of death stretches back decades. In this special episode of Morning Wire, Ian Haworth joins us to discuss the stories of those who have dared to stand up to Putin and his deadly regime.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has been declared an enemy of the world and even a war criminal. But Putin's record of violence, deception, and a mysterious trail of death stretches back decades. In this special edition of Morning Wire, Ian Howarth joins us to discuss the stories of those who dared to stand up to Putin's regime in Russia. This show is sponsored by Epic Will. Do you have a Will? You might be shocked to learn how many people don't. Creating a Will is fundamental to protecting yourself and and your family, because if something happens to you and your spouse, the state will decide what

happens to your kids and your assets. Take control. Go to epicwill.com promo code wire. Epicwill.com, where you can secure your future in as little as five minutes with a complete will package starting at $119. And when you use promo code wire, you'll save 10%. That's epicwill.com promo code wire. Ian, welcome. Hi, hi, Georgia. So, Ian, where do we even begin? We'll start this particular a story on August 20th, 2020, when the leading political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny, suddenly fell seriously ill while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. After an emergency landing, Navalny was rushed to a hospital and put into a coma. Two days later, he was evacuated to a hospital in Germany.

There, five certified labs from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed that a nerve agent had been used to poison Navalny. Well, Germany is being absolutely clear about what happened to Russia's most high high-profile opposition figure Alexei Navalny. I've listened to Angela Merkel earlier. The presence of this poison was discovered without any doubt. Therefore, it is now certain that Alexei Navalny is the victim of a crime. Their attempt was to silence him, and I condemn this.

After he recovered, Navalny said that his rival, Putin, was behind the poisoning. I have no other explanation for what happened, he said. It's maybe the most toxic agents invented by the humans. So it's a new type of Novichok, which prove that unfortunately Putin have a developing new program of this chemical weapon, which is forbidden. But unfortunately, Navalny is far from the only person to fall victim after standing up in somewhere another to the Russian regime. And in many ways, Navalny is one of the lucky ones as he lived to tell his story. But before we discussed those who weren't so fortunate, it's important to first ask, who is Vladimir Putin? Born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg in

52, Vladimir Putin joined the Soviet Intelligence Agency, the KGB in 1975, where he quickly rose through the ranks. Years later, as the Soviet Union collapsed, Putin returned to Russia and resigned from the KGB on the second day of a coup against then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, with Putin, as he put it, immediately deciding which side he was on. It just so happened that Putin chose the side that was going to win. Putin then pivoted to a career in politics, quickly rising to the position of first deputy chief of President Yeltsin's presidential staff in 1998, and then director of the FSB, the Federal Security Service, the successor of the Soviet area KGB, that same year. One year later, he was appointed as one of

several deputy prime ministers, and then his acting prime minister of the Russian Federation by Yeltsin. Then Yeltsin announced that he wanted Putin as his successor, all on the same day. Just over four months later, Yeltsin said, suddenly and unexpectedly resigned, and Putin became acting president of the Russian Federation, before winning the election the following March. In Russia today, the clear winner of the Russian presidential election Vladimir Putin began to establish the Putin era. Vladimir Putin, the career spy, talks about establishing what he calls a dictatorship of the law, fight corrupt bureaucrats, and strengthen the central government.

And Putin has been in control of Russia ever since. Right. I mean, Putin has been controlling Russia as long as I can personally remember, basically since my childhood. How has he managed to hold power that long? Well, some believe that part of the answer to that question is a decades-long trail of violence that begins and ends in the Kremlin. As was the case in the Soviet Union under Yeltsin, dozens of journalists or political distance have been found dead during Putin's time in office. In fact, so many Russian journalists have died, either in the field or from other causes, that an official day of remembrance, the Remembrance Day of Journalists killed in the line of duty,

is observed on December 15th every year. One of these journalists is a woman called Anna Politikovskaya. She wrote a book called Putin's Russia in which she criticized the Putin regime and Putin personally for turning Russia into a police state. In what was found to be a contract killing for $150,000, she was shot at point-blank range. Five men were convicted of her murder, but it was never revealed who paid for the hit.

Putin spoke at a funeral where he condemned her killing as well as her reporting. Another journalist in this growing list is Natalia Esther Merova. She was found in woods near her home after being abducted and shot in the head. No one was ever convicted of her murder. Those who try and help these endangered journalists are also at risk. For example, a human rights lawyer called Stanislav Markalov represented journalists who criticized Putin, including Politikovskaya. He was shot outside the Kremlin. Another journalist, Anastasia Babarova, was also shot when she tried to help Markalov.

Yet another victim of a contract killing was Paul Klebner, who was the chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes. He investigated corruption in Russia, especially among the wealthy elite. He was murdered in a dry-by shooting. And then there are Putin's political rivals and opponents. Boris Nemtsov, another former deputy prime minister of Russia under Yeltsin, was an outspoken critic of Putin, accusing Putin of, among other things,

being in the pocket of wealthy Russian oligarchs. He was shot four times in the back in the shadows of the Kremlin. Putin took personal control of the investigation, with one theory being that this murder was the result, of Islamic extremism. The killer, or killers, were never found. Well, even in the early hours here in the Russian capital, people have come out to this scene where Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on Friday evening to pay their respects to one of Russia's leading opposition figures. Another politician, Sergei Yushenko, was assassinated just hours

after registering his political party, Liberal Russia, to run for office in the parliamentary elections in late 2003. Four people were convinced. one of them being a former co-chairman of the party who denied his involvement and later attempted suicide in prison. Right, and this is not even a comprehensive list, correct? Exactly. There are so many more and some are as violent as they are mysterious. First, there's Boris Berzovsky, a Russian oligarch nickname Rasputin, who assists Putin in his

rise to power. He fled to the United Kingdom after his relationship with Putin deteriorated. He later threatened to bring Putin down and openly accused Putin of having his opponents murdered. He previously survived multiple assassination attempts, including a bombing which decapitated his chauffeur. While he was found dead in his home in England in what appeared to be a suicide, inside a locked bathroom with a legerchair around his neck. A murder mystery involving two governments and a Russian oligarch, the victim is this man, Boris Beresovsky. He fled to England after a fallout with the Russian government.

The cause of that fallout, accusing the Kremlin of poisoning a former Russian spy with radioactive material. That may be why a hazardous material. team was called to his home to help figure out the cause of his death, but nothing was found during the initial investigations. The coroner who investigated said he couldn't prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Beresovsky killed himself or was killed by someone else. According to one expert who specializes in these sorts of cases, the marks on Berosovsky's neck could not have come from a hanging.

He believed that Beresovsky was instead strangled and then hung from the shower rail to mimic a suicide. Next there's Yuri Shegercokikin, yet another journalist who, investigated corruption, organized crime in the Soviet Union in Russia. He died suddenly from a mysterious illness just days before he was due to travel to the United States to meet with the FBI. His medical records were apparently either lost or destroyed, but his symptoms appeared to match other cases of radioactive poisoning. Similar to Roman Sepov, an earlier confidant to Putin who died after he had a cup of tea

at a local FSB office. Sepov was hospitalized after experiencing vomiting, diarrhea, and crashing white blood cell count. He died 13 days later in St. Petersburg. And then there's perhaps the most famous case of suspected radioactive poisoning of all, the 2006 case involving Alexander Litvinenko. Right, this was the famous poisoning incident in London. Yeah, it was also a cup of tea, laced with the deadly radioactive compound Pololium 210,

which caused the death of Litvinenko, a former FSB agent in London. An investigation by British authorities found that Lipvinenko was poisoned by several FSB agents with orders likely coming straight from the Kremlin. It was the shocking murder of a prominent Russian dissidents seen here dying in his hospital bed and an act of nuclear terrorism, say British officials, in the heart of London, just yards from the U.S. Embassy. Now a British investigation has found

that the two Russian secret agents accused of the murder, quote, probably acted with the approval of Russian president, Vladimir Putin. The European Court of Human Rights found the Kremlin responsible for Liffin Yenko's death, while two of the accused FSB agents suggested that Litvinenko might have poisoned himself. And on his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his assassination. So are all of these just journalists or individuals who criticized Putin,

or is there a discernible pattern of who is targeted? Well, what's unsettling here is that there are a few common threads that tie so many of these cases together. One clear example involves links to the now Russian Republic of the predominantly Muslim Chechnya and the claim that the Russian government was behind several key turning points in their own war on terror in the late 90s. Litvinenko, for example, blamed the FSB for carrying out a series of bombings in 1999 that killed hundreds of civilians in Russia. Russian authorities blame these bombing attacks on Chechen warlords, and the bombings increased public support for the invasion of Chechnya that followed, all of which contributed to Putin's rise to power. Putin went on to campaign on the issue, taking a hard line against Chechnya and vowing not to negotiate with terrorists.

However, like Litvinenko, the liberal Russia leader Yushenkov also believed that Russia orchestrated these attacks and claimed to be gathering evidence as such a conspiracy when he was killed. Berzovsky, the man who died in a supposed suicide, was allied with both Litvinenko and a former Chechen warlord. Litvinenko also worked with Anna Politikovskaya, the first journalist we talked about in the show, on exposing another conspiracy, that the FSB were allegedly behind the infamous Moscow theater hostage crisis. Politikovskaya, who investigated this story, also had links to others who had been killed. She was colleagues with Shakikokkin, who died following a sudden and mysterious illness, and Esther Merova, who was abducted and shot in the head. Esther Merova investigated human rights abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya. Then there's Klemnikov, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting.

Putin's regime suggested that both Klemnakov and Politikovskaya were killed by an ethnic Chechen organized crime group, but others have blamed Russian government agencies for the hit. Even years later, these deaths remain shrouded in mystery. Were they the result of random acts of violence? Were they carried out by organized crime groups or Chechen terrorists? Or do the bloody footprints lead straight to Moscow? Now, has Putin responded to any of these accusations? He has either by denying any involvement in these deaths

or arguing that the same happens elsewhere. For example, during one press conference in 2021, Putin responded to these accusations by referring to the U.S. response to January 6th. You didn't answer my question, sir. If all of your political opponents are dead in prison, poison, doesn't that send a message that you do not want a fair political fight? All right, about my opponents in jail or in prison. People went into U.S. Congress with political demands.

400 people are now facing criminal charges. They are facing a criminal charges. Prison terms of up to 25 years, they are called homegrown terrorists. Putin has also denied involvement in specific deaths, such as Politkovskaya's murder. He condemned it as a hideous crime and claimed that her killing was actually more damaging to the Kremlin than her reporting. Meanwhile, other experts say that while Putin isn't directly responsible for the deaths of other journalists during his term, he may have created the climate which allows these murders

to happen. In reality, we'll never know who was behind these deaths and so many more. But one thing is for sure. Speaking out against the Russian regime is a dangerous business. It certainly seems so. And this gives us a clearer picture of who we're dealing with in Ukraine. Ian, thanks for reporting. Thanks, Georgia.

That's Daily Wires, Ian Howarth. And this was a special episode of Morning Wire. If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter, available exclusively to Daily Wire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code MorningWire to try a reader's past membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.