Piers Morgan Uncensored - Putin's 'Oldest Enemy' reacts to Alexei Navalny's Death

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Mikhail Khordokovsky was a Russian oligarch. At one point he was the richest man in the country. But he crossed a red line in Russia - he took on Vladimir Putin. After 10 years in jail on dubious charges, he was eventually pardoned and fled to Britain, where he lives in exile - known as “Putin’s oldest enemy.” In his first interview since the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Mikhail Khordokovsky is uncensored. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bikarl Kortikovsky was a Russian oligug, at one point the richest man in the country. But he crossed a familiar red line in Russia. He took on Vladimir Putin. And up to 10 years in jail on trumped up charges, he was eventually pardoned and fled to Britain. Well, he now lives in exile. He's known as Putin's oldest enemy. And then his first debut since the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Mikhail Kornikovsky is here and unscensive. You have to prove that Putin is not legitimate.

It would be a very important step to weaken his resources. First, show your strength that talk to him from the position of strength. And then talk to him the way you talk to gangsters. Sorry for Tucker Carlson. The criticism was by the people who don't understand that he is on the territory of a gangster. He's talking to a gangster. Mikhail, thank you very much indeed for coming in. Your reaction, first of all, to the death of Alexei Navalny?

My first reaction was unbelievable. I cannot believe it. We cannot believe it. We did know that Putin's circle, Putin's entourage. We're threatening that Navalny would never leave prison. We're threatening that Navalny would never leave prison. They repeated it. repeated it a number of times.

But we thought that they would not let him go so far as Putin is alive, as long as Putin is alive. But now, re-assessing the situation, we understand that perhaps what they meant was that much worse outcome that we, in fact, faced today. So this was foreseeable, predictable, but emotionally very difficult to take. We really did think that it was impossible. His widow, Yulia, believes that he may have been poisoned with Novichok, and that's why the body has not been released and may not be released for two more weeks.

What do you think? In Putin's Russia, anything is possible. Maybe this is the case. Perhaps he was poisoned by another medicine that was more trivial, or perhaps a man who had been poisoned and was in a coma for several weeks, who had spent three years in prison behind the Arctic Circle with a huge fluctuations of temperature, perhaps his health just gave in. But this doesn't mean anything.

What it means, it still means that Putin murdered him. But what method he used, who were the perpetrators of that murder, is of course important. But in order to punish those people, and Putin's guilt in that case will not change. He would still be guilty. You spent 10 years in Russian penal colonies. How tough are they to actually exist in? Russian prisons today are better than the gulag of the past.

In any case, you don't. die of hunger. You're not incarcerated with minus or zero, sub-zero temperatures. So if people are murdered, that happens quite rarely. But it doesn't mean that that prison is not prison. I used to be put in a metal box, 40 centimeters by 8 centimeters by one, meter 20. That was the transportation box to courtroom, and I would spend five hours in such a box, when it would be 50 plus under the sun outside, and that was a challenge, and that went on for several years. And every day, you would think, another five hours to be spent in a metal box.

And in fact, these things happen, a lot of. such things happen. So this is why I'm saying that prison in itself does not add any health or did not add any health to Alexei, did not improve his health. So he could have been killed by just being kept in prison. Yes, I understand. You were the richest man in Russia and then you're in your box, this tiny box getting fried by extreme heat and so on. You were eventually pardoned by Putin and you allowed to leave Russia. Did you ever speak to him again, Peter? Not directly. But we did have several public statements addressing each other.

I think our relations are quite clear. They started with me respecting Boris Yeltsin's choice. respecting the man who my citizens of Russia, co-patrious, compatriots, had chosen as president, although it wasn't me. I lost my respect when, on the 19th of February 2003 at the meeting that anyone can watch on the Internet today. I realized in that meeting that Putin, in response to my statement about corruption in the high echelones of Russian power vertical responded. As follows, he said, you are guilty of that, you are to blame, and he was not going to make any effort to eradicate that. So I understood that that corruption was actually been given green light by him, and that was the moment when I lost my respect for him.

But I saw myself as his opponent and nothing more. But when the war started against Ukraine, everything changed, because Harcov is a native city for me. Kiev is a city which is very close to my heart. Jitomir is a city where my grandfather was born. So I cannot. understand or treat normally a person or people who are bombing those cities. You were friends with Putin and you were the richest man reportedly in Russia.

What happened? Why did you fall out with him? I don't even know how to say it now. To chance or, to say it, whether it's fortunate or unfortunate. I never had never been very close to Putin ever. If I had I been close, then maybe I'd be not been close. I wouldn't have spent 10 years in prison. But, even, I know him enough.

I knew him quite well. And he seemed to me completely... A completely different person. Well, so, I mean, like and some people of his country. like other people from his entourage, from his circle. So when I talk to others who know him well, they say that he has changed radically, drastically. They now see a different man in him.

Or perhaps he was just faking it in the past. I want to play you a clip. This is of an interview I did with President Bill Clinton, who had a short one. a short period of time where he was the leader of the United States. Putin had just become leader in Russia. About a year they had together as leaders. This is what Clinton told me about Putin.

What was he like behind closed doors away from the public utterances? Smart and remarkably, we had a really good blunt relationship. How blunt? Brutely blunt. Ever, like, you know, fisty cuss? No, but I think, you know, I think the right strategy most of the time is, but it's frustrating to people in your line of work. You should be brutally honest with people in private.

And then if you want them to help you, try to avoid embarrassing them in public. Now, sometimes they do things which make it impossible for you to keep quiet. But by and large, I found all the people I dealt with appreciated it if I talked about. I told them the truth. How I honestly felt and what our interests were and what our objectives were. And they also appreciated it when I didn't kick them around in public for as long as I couldn't kick them around. So that's my experience.

If deputin ever renege on a personal agreement he made to you? He did not. So behind closed doors he could be trusted. He kept his word and all the deals we made. Now I find that fascinating. That was 2013, so 11 years ago. But there was Bill Clinton saying that behind closed doors, if they reached agreement, Putin could be trusted.

What do you think of that? It is true that Putin... ...puttal to a particular point in time had tried to stand by those words he gave in a personal conversation. But you had to listen very carefully to understand what. exactly he promised. So for a while he hadn't allowed himself or his entourage to attack families of his opponents. He did not allow himself or his entourage to attack women. But with time that went away and now it is different. And today, I would not rely on his word. He is a man with a mafia mentality.

Gangsters. Who are gangsters? Gangsters... Gangsters... When they are in a circle of people who they have to respect, they try to stand by their word. But today, he doesn't respect anyone.

He is not treating anyone with respect anymore. You were in prison for 10 years. Did you think when you were in prison that you may meet the same fate as Alexei Navalny that you would be killed? It was a different time. I was Putin's personal prisoner. Putin didn't want to kill me. Because for him, I was a considerable pawn in his game.

I had a direct-combe. I had a direct-com. with a conversation with the head of the penal colony, the general who was in charge of it, of the whole region, he said, we don't have an order to kill you. And I said, if you get such an order, he said, Mikhail Borisich, then you have to excuse us.

I mean, that's chilling to hear. You can smile now, but at the time, you must have felt. Were you scared all the time in prison? When you enter the prison, if you are afraid, your life is not going to last, and it's going to be a very nasty life. You have to say to yourself, my life is worthless. My first dry hunger strike went on for seven days, didn't eat anything, didn't drink anything, having promised, of the prison that if they kill my friend, they said they would strangle him in a prison cell. In a punishment cell, they would have two cadavers, they would have two dead people.

And they gave in on day eight. Had they not given in, I would have had to die, because you cannot give in if you're in prison. You were prepared to sacrifice your life for your friend. This is normal. My friends would also be ready to sacrifice their lives for me. I think this is a normal way to behave. Alexei Navalny, for many people, represented the resistance to Putin. Do you think his death will harm that resistance?

or do you think it may fuel it? In this short period of time remaining until Putin's election, the presidential staff, his administration, think that there's going to be a reduction in political activism with the opposition think the opposite. People will not be afraid. they will be ready to demonstrate to Putin, their attitude to him. On the 17th of March, we'll see what pans out.

Do you not worry that every time you're out in the street, that somebody may come up with an umbrella or something and kill you? Do you know, over the past 10, I spent 10 years in prison in cells, sharing cells with people, who had murdered someone, who had been involved in trafficking drugs. I shared cells with people who were drug addicts who sold drugs in prison. If you constantly think about the fact that you could be murdered, you would just go mad, go insane. You have to forget about it.

You have to say, my profession is a little bit risky, like a journalist's profession, journalists. Well, it has been the journalists in Russia. Evan Gersovich from the Wall Street Journal, for example, is in prison. And I can only imagine how his family must feel when they see what happened to Navalny, worried that it may happen to Evan. I don't think that there is a direct threat to Gerskovich's life today, because he is a useful man for an exchange.

But there is another British citizen, Vladimir Karmuzza, who is behind bars at the moment. He was poisoned twice. So he's in poor health now and he could die any minute. Another person, Russian opposition activist, Ilia Lashen, there are others who are also

imprisoned now. And yes, their lives are at risk. How does the world get rid of Putin? He clearly is rigging the election so that he keeps getting re-elected. He's killing his opponents. He's behaving, as you say, like a mafia boss.

How does the world get rid of him? I think that the West, at least, has committed a very serious error back in 2019. After the annexation of Crimea, when the West recognized the legitimacy of Putin's elections, including in Crimea. So Putin realized that. that he can do whatever he wants, and that's how we got 2022, when he unleashed a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. If now the West recognizes his legitimacy once again after these elections, I am almost convinced that in a year or two,

the West would have to face Putin's aggression and Putin's threat on the territory of NATO. So it would be very important indeed. To send a signal, an important signal, that Putin's legitimacy is not recognized. This would be important for his circle would start to get nervous. It would be very important that the soldiers that he is recruiting today would say to themselves, this man is not legitimate. We are being sent to the front line. This front line is a crime according to the Russian legislation.

Aggressive wars are banned under Russian legislation. He is going to die, but we are going to go to prison. People have to understand that. They have to hear that. People in Russia listen very attentively to what is being said in the West. Perhaps it is not worth rushing to congratulate him with a pseudo-victory in the elections. Are we being too weak, the West, in the way we deal with Putin? Should we be a lot stronger?

I think that today Putin is convinced that the West is weak that if tomorrow he has to attack one of the NATO countries, there would be absolutely no reaction, no response, and NATO would just collapse. Putin is confident that today there is no one he has to respect in the West. I think this is a risky situation.

But today, you, we all, have made a serious monster out of this gangster. So you couldn't just say in any easy fashion to him that we are no longer afraid of you. It wouldn't be possible to do that any longer. Now we would have to pay with lives like Ukraine is doing at the moment. If Ukraine doesn't get help to win in this war, the West would have to pay with other lives, with Western lives. Do you think he would ever use nuclear weapons? I don't really believe in Putin's readiness to use nuclear weapons until there is a direct

threat to his own life. Because the confrontation taking place at the moment is still quite limited by the occupied territories of Ukraine, and it doesn't pose a direct risk to him personally. So I do have serious doubts about him using nuclear weapons, because at the moment, so far, he's been able to win with conventional arms, because the West is not ready to understand understand the seriousness of the threat and does not manufacture sufficient numbers of weapons. Did you watch Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin and what did you think of it? I spent two hours and I think Tucker Carlson owes me for those two hours spent watching it.

Well, I was rather sorry for Tucker Carlson because he did quite a good job as a journalist and people who criticized him. in fact, the criticism was by the people who don't understand that he is on the territory of a gangster, he's talking to a gangster, and he might actually stay Putin not being able to leave that territory. So he allowed Putin to show his own face to demonstrate what he is like. And the conclusions we draw from that interview are our own conclusion. It's up to us. That's very interesting. I mean, I can't go to Russia because I'm on Putin's sanctioned list of journalists.

But what you're saying is it doesn't really matter what Tucker Carlson asked him. It's the answers that Putin gave that we should be examining. Absolutely. Absolutely. We heard Putin's understanding of history about his take on relations with other countries. What we heard was that indeed, he is not. very confident he would like to have peace. We've also understood from that interview that he is not ready to part with territories, at least with the existing balance of forces. So we understood quite a lot.

We took quite a lot from that interview. And in my opinion, it was worth sending Carlson to to Moscow to have a chat with Putin, what Putin's presidential office were after in that interview. I don't think they got their point across. I don't think that the American audience... ...tube took the interview the way Putin wanted. He wanted to show that he was a normal guy, that you can just talk to him like you do to a normal guy. Unfortunately, that was not projected by the interview. Your organization, Open Russia, tracks the mood of Russia and of Russians.

There's a belief which is put out by Putin and his regime that most Russians support him, that they believe what he tells them. Do you think that's true, or is the mood different? The situation is a situation is co-dinely different in fact. When you have a totalitarian regime, people are afraid of saying

about their real attitude to the regime even when they have a personal conversation so everyone thinks that it's on their own. They think that against the regime. They think that the rest support the regime. And this is what Putin propaganda is trying to promote, to advocate.

And this is why we are calling on our allies, our supporters, to go to the polling stations so that they would see that there are lots of them. And in the past, we urged them, for instance, to give their signatures for Boris Nadiezhien. Boris Nadieszschein was a person who was recommended as a candidate by the presidential office. He survived a person, and yet he was allowed to go on an anti-war ticket, to stand on an anti-war ticket. So there were long views of people who wanted to give their signatures for him. So actually collected 200,000 signatures very fast. And we can draw two important.

conclusions from that, the first one. Putin said that he had collected three million signatures, but then nobody has seen those long queues. So where are those three millions? So according to Putin, it was three million, but it is completely fake. Secondly, we have also seen that as soon somebody demonstrates that he stands against the war, their rating, jumps from zero to ten points over such a short period of time, he became second most popular person in the country. That shows the anti-Putin potential in Russia. It is held back by Putin's propaganda, but also it is held back by the fact that Western

leaders, when they accept Putin in the past, accepted Putin in the past, they show that he was a counterparty worthy of dealing with, and that showed to Russians. Well, this person obviously has legitimacy in the eyes of the West. So why should we object? So if you have to prove that Putin is not legitimate, it would be a very important step to weaken his resources, to weaken his ability to continue the war. So I would like to urge, Western organizations, British organizations, the British Parliament to think seriously about the fact should they give additional legitimacy to Putin by congratulating him with the victory.

There would be a total lie, a total fake. So to be clear, if he, when he wins the next election, you would like the British Parliament and other countries to denounce it as illegitimate? I think that each country would have to decide for themselves to what extent they can afford that. But in any case, there is no need to hurry and to rush to celebrate him. And no point in celebrating him unconditionally or negotiating with the person who has shown many times that he does not have any respect for promises, agreements, deals. So you should not negotiate with the person when you're in a weak position. First, show your strength that you talk to him from the position of strength,

and then talk to him the way you talk to gangsters when you want to free some hostages, because you don't have to recognize their legitimacy when you do that. There are a rising number of Americans, particularly on the conservative right, who do not want to give any more money to President Zelensky and Ukraine to fight Putin, who don't think it's in America's national interest to do that. What's your message to them? America is on a different continent. Yes, indeed.

Indeed, the United States might not get any direct threat from Putin. But the United States are the country that gains a lot out of the global market, out of the fact that there is security and peace in Europe, that there are people with high purchasing power here in Europe. So all these things could be in jeopardy, could be lost when the war goes on, or when Putin wins that would then lead to a war with NATO in a couple of years' time. And if you don't see that, you are at grave danger. You are mistaken, because America has to understand that indirectly they draw dividends from the global market. And they might lose those dividends tomorrow.

There have been threats from Putin's people that London, the UK may get attacked soon. Do you think that's likely? If the UK show their weakness, firstly, Putin will carry on killing British citizens on British streets, Secondly, he would have a serious influence on British politics. I'll give you an example. I had a conversation, not with the British, but with the German politicians a few years ago.

We spoke about the fact that the sanctions, and the sanctions at the time were not so serious, as serious as today, the sanctions against the Putin regime. He was against the sanctions, and I asked him, why are you against the sanctions? He said, you know what? I'm separated by the door of my house from Putin's assassins. I'm separated by the door of my house from Putin's assassins, and this is what I'm afraid of. But this is the fate of the weak to shake behind their doors, the doors of their houses. I don't think that this is what the UK would choose, at least as far as I understand, as far as I understand, the British.

British are different, I think. Final question. Do you hope to go home one day? I'm almost certain that I will. I'm younger than Putin, a little bit younger. Obviously, I didn't get healthier because of prison, but his wonderful job doesn't make him a healthier man. So I do hope that I would be able to go back to my country in about 10 years time and live there.

Thank you very much indeed. You're coming in. I appreciate it. Fascinating conversation. Thank you.