Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/22/24 Ted Snider on the Death of Alexei Navalny and the Russian Victory at Avdiivka

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Ted Snider is back on the show to talk about the death of Alexei Navalny. Snider wrote a piece recently criticizing President Biden for acting like he knows for certain that Putin had Navalny killed. He and Scott talk about what’s known about the man’s death, what’s probable, who he really was and what he actually stood for. They finish with a quick discussion about the Ukrainian’s devastating defeat at the city of Avdiivka. Discussed on the show: “Biden Knows Putin Killed Alexei Navalny” (Antiwar.com) “Selecting Syrsky: The Untold Half of the Zaluzhny Story” (Antiwar.com) Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history. He is a regular writer for Truthout, MondoWeiss and antiwar.com. To support Ted’s work, you can make a PayPal contribution at [e-mail]. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i got ted snider he writes for us at antiwar dot com and at the libertarian institute and his latest at anti-war.com is called Biden knows Putin killed Alexei Navalny.

Welcome back to the show, Ted. How are you doing, man? I'm doing all right. Thanks for having me, Scott. Happy to have you here. So I'm already bored of this story, but go ahead and tell me who's Alexi Navalny and why does anybody care about him? Well, Alexei Navalny, I mean, it's hard to say who Alexei Navalny was because his positions were really hard to pin down. But he was for the West.

the face of the face of the opposition to Putin. So for the West, Alexei Navalny was an exciting character because he represented that opposition and with his death, that's being played by Biden to reinforce this idea that Putin is a, you know, a brutal person who killed Navalny and this abuse as evidence to, you know, increase funding for Ukraine to fight Putin and to stop the, you know, to stop the monster.

But it's an interesting story because it's an interesting story to look at what Navalny meant in Russia, as opposed to the West, and to look at some of the dangers of Biden's assumption that it was Putin that killed Navalny, and also to look at some of the things that would change, say, if Navalny was the opposition leader and some of the sort of warnings those gifts. So there's a lot of interesting angles to it to talk about. It depends on where you want to start. I mean, for me, the starting point is that when Navalny died in prison in Russia and, you know, Biden made his first statements and he was asked if they knew that Navalny had been assassinated. Biden said the answers, we don't know exactly what happened. But then he went on to say, make no mistake, Putin's response. for his death. This is interesting to me, Scott, because the president of the United States,

he only knows what his intelligence community tells him, right? Like, he's in the White House and he can't see the world. He has to make decisions, but he makes decisions based on the information his intelligence community gives him. And Biden shows a disturbing tendency to make judgments that go beyond what the intelligence community tells him. And that's a risky thing to do as a president because that makes you're making decisions on things you don't know. He doesn't know that Putin killed Navalny. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. But if the US intelligence doesn't know, then Biden doesn't know. And so he probably shouldn't be making policy based on that knowledge, which he doesn't know. So that's sort of the first interesting

thing, right? Well, you know what we have with Biden, the same kind of thing we have a little bit with Trump, although nobody ever caught him in any slack. But you certainly had this with w bush well the guy's such an idiot that everybody's cutting him slack all the time and kind of trying to charitably interpret what he says in a way and we have that with biden where you know there's a way to look at it where he really means it sort of like as a figure of speech because it's really a pretty simple argument to say come on the guy was in prison in the Arctic circle doing hard labor

on obviously bogus political charges. So if he dies a frostbite up there still he was murdered by the regime. It was man too right. Something like that you know, there's an argument there

to be had. Maybe that's all he meant by it. I think I would agree with that. And we have the same thing with Ukraine and Gonzalo Lira. We have this question of Julian Assange. right now, whether he's going to die in prison based on some trumped-up crap because they hate him. And that's America acting a lot like Putin to me, and I ain't like it. You know what I mean? Most of our problems between America and Russia are instigated by the United States, but

that doesn't mean that I approve of the way they run the prison system over there. And I don't believe that Navalny was guilty of whatever fraud they convicted him of. He's still presumed innocent to me. You know what I mean? On that, the guy, if they wanted to try him for being a CIA asset, that would probably be a different matter. But, like, clearly it was some trumped-up charges, right? So, I don't know. There is something to that. And it's the same argument that they make, of course, about Magnitsky, although they claim he was beaten to death. And I don't know if that's really true, although I think he was beaten before he died, but he died basically of medical neglect, the same as Gonzalo Lira. So, um,

It's an interesting question, Scott, and there's a long history. This happened, you know, it happening in recently when Progoshan's plane went down to. There's this assumption always that Putin killed people because there's this long list of opponents in the West that Putin is held to have killed. The problem is when you look at that list, when scholars look at that list, probably none of and certainly few of those people are ever actually killed by Putin. there's like there's the question of whether with the exception of pregozen probably i could see him order in that one because that guy came at him hard you know look there's a lot of guys that came at putton hard and there's a lot of claims in the west that these people are really legitimate you know opposition to putton and putt would want them taken out but when serious scholars have

looked at the list of of people and there's like a dozen or more people on the list there's always the you know there's that there's this question that these people were killed and And it's possible, you know, some scholars, some Putin biographers say that Putin allowed a system where because he didn't punish people who killed people, it allowed for people to get killed. But that's very different from saying that Putin gave the order or even the approval to kill. And in most of the cases, there's very little evidence. A lot of really good scholars like Stephen Cohen and Philip Short and Richard Sakwa argue that in most cases, there's very little evidence. A lot of really good scholars like Stephen Cohen and Philip Short and Richard Sokwa argue that in most cases there's no evidence that Putin gave the order or approved of those killings. And the thing about Navalny is that there's the suggestion that Putin would want these people removed because they're a threat to him.

But there's the very serious question of motive because it's not clear that Navalny was a threat to Putin. Because although the West held him up as sort of the poster child of the opposition, he never really played that role in Russia. He never really took root in Russian soil as that kind of threat to Putin. And in fact, recent polling, like reliable independent polling, showed that in January, just a month before Navalny's death, his approval ratings had sunk to below 1%. And they never were much higher than that. I mean, they never really escaped the single digits. One scholar famously said that Navalny was more of a gadfly than a national leader because he never really did get over a couple. So he never was a political threat to Putin.

Well, in fact, I mean, Ted, if he had any kind of popularity at all, he could have picked up a seat in the Duma and then he would have had immunity from prosecution. You know, here his high water mark was running for mayor of Moscow, which he lost. So he was, he ran for mayor of Moscow. He was allowed by Putin. In fact, Putin's party helped him to run. They thought he'd get clobbered. He actually was better than they expected. He got about 27% of the vote.

But that's in Moscow. And Moscow often gets more votes against Putin than the rest of Russia. But that 27% was the high water mark for him. In the 2018 elections, when Navalny was not allowed to run, the pre-election polls showed that he was only getting about 2% support. So even if he had run, he wasn't going to be a threat. And the parties that were on like the social liberal end of the spectrum where Navalny at the time was positioning himself, they only got 3% of the vote. The Communist Party got was much more of a threat to Putin than the groups represented by Navalny. And at the time of his death, he had no support.

less than 1%. And so you get the question of motive there, Scott. And don't get me wrong. I'm not making the case that Putin didn't kill Navalny. I'm also not making the case that Putin did. I'm making the case that Biden doesn't know. And so he probably shouldn't be making policy base when he does. And the argument I'm making is that Navalny's popularity was not a threat to Putin. It was very, very low. He didn't need to worry about it. He had less than 1% support. And the timing, Scott, was terrible. Things are going great for Putin right now. He's coming into this election. His polling numbers are astonishing. They're in the 80s, probably around 83%. And I know you can argue that elections aren't fair in Russia, and certainly they're not totally fair in Russia. But you

could run a totally fair election in Russia right now and Putin would clean up. So he's polling at about 83%, which is really high. And then Navalny's death, it actually stole the headline that Putin most wanted before the election. And that's the fall of the town of Avdeka, which is not a symbolic victory like the West likes to paint it. It's a turning point in the war. This is a crucial victory. And, you know, Putin would have wanted that headline that I'm soaring along at 83%.

The war is going great now. Everything's beautiful. And then Navalny gets killed and all this suspicion gets cast on Putin. And it's exactly the PR he doesn't want now. So there is, again, I'm not. for a verdict, but you can't just make the assumption. You need to look at it. There have been lots of Putin opponents who have died without Putin's orders or approval, and you need to at least look at what is the case. Why would Putin want Navalny dead now? You can't just assume that Putin

ordered it. So, you know, that's an interesting thing. And there's other interesting things, too, Scott, that, that, you know, should be talked about with Navalny, because there's the question, you know, When Biden starts pressuring the House of Representatives and says that, you know, this is a reminder of why we should be continuing military aid for Ukraine because look what Putin did to Navalny, it's instructive to look at what Navalny did too. And when you look at Navalny as this figure for, you know, opposing the war in Ukraine, it's important to remember that Navalny's foreign policy in these cases where it's not significantly different from Putin at all, that changing Putin for, Navalny wouldn't have gotten the West its fantasy. Navalny was not in favor of returning Crimea to Ukraine any more than Putin or any other Russian leader would be. The farthest that Navalny ever went on Crimea was to say, well, maybe we should let them

have another referendum. But he knew full well that a referendum would just mean Crimea leaving. So he supported not giving back Crimea. In the 2008 war with Georgia, with the Russian military involvement in Georgia, Navalny fully fully supported the war in Georgia. Some people say that he revoked that later. It's hard to tell with him because he changed his mission all the time, but he probably didn't. He had some very racist names for people in Georgia, and he probably revoked calling them that, but he didn't revoke supporting the involvement. And most importantly, Navalny was an advocate for protecting ethnic

Russians abroad. And look, that was one of Putin's main reasons for going into the Donbass and into Georgia was protecting ethnic Russians from abroad. So when we support, you know, Navalny to stop Putin for his being in Ukraine, Navalny wouldn't have stopped Putin from what he's doing in Ukraine. And, and, you know, it also raises this warning about, you know, be careful about wishing for regime change because you don't always know what's coming up behind Putin. And look, Navalny was always an anti-Putin, anti-corruptionist fighter.

That was noble, and he was courageous, and at times that campaign was brilliant. It was sometimes hard to tell exactly what Navalny did believe, but he always believed in, you know, anti-corruption, anti-Pooten. But he wasn't anti-Putin foreign policy, and sometimes in some of his other things, as an alternative, although he may have been a much better leader than Putin, he could have also been worse. While he didn't differ on the foreign policy, he was less pluralistic than Putin, more nationalistic, more anti-immigrant, more, you know, more. His policies were more racist anti-immigrant time. He called immigrants cockroaches in one of his videos. He advocated the solution for immigrants was shooting them. I mean, you're looking at the New York Times, you know, eulogizing Navalny as another Martin Luther King, Jr. or Nelson Mandela.

He wasn't. We should call him what he was. He was a very courageous, very brilliant, very effective anti-corruption campaigner. But he was not Martin Luther King Jr. He was very anti-immigrant. It was very, you know, it's not a fair picture to paint. So we have to be a bit careful how we handle Navalny and jump on board with the Russian opposition.

And Biden needs to be careful about the language it he uses. Hey, y'all, I got a new coffee sponsor, Moondose Artisan Coffee at Moondoseartisan Coffee.com. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like my brain is all dried out. I need to pour a hot mug of rich, tasty coffee all over it to get it back working again. like 10W30 for the Noggin.

Though not necessary, it helps if the coffee tastes good. Well, Moondos Artisan Coffee does taste good. They get the best beans from all around the world, and they don't burn them. Support the show and support your brain at moondoseartisan coffee.com. Just click the link at the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety.

I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scotthorton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess.

Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up for the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org, or go to

Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th, from the director of Meet the parents and the writer of poor things comes the roses starring academy award winner Olivia Coleman Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch Andy Sandberg Kate McKinnon and Allison Janney a hilarious new comedy filled with drama excitement and a little bit of hatred proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses

see the roses only in theaters August 29th get tickets now well I mean the way that the Americans carry on about the guy couldn't be more obvious you know like tone it down a little bit here but if you go back like you're saying about you know his political origins and all of that it was interesting i didn't know i picked up from your article that he'd been kicked out of the yublocho party yeah for his statements and there's people can find the video of this of him saying that the you know referring essentially to chechens as cockroaches and saying we should shoot them and all that and you know there was a article it's in my pile

aka my ever unfinished book during the Snow Revolution I think it was in 11 that the New York Times said well what's going on here is you have this coalition

in the street at least in these protests with essentially just like if you're talking about the green revolution in Iran a bunch of liberals from the big city you know who don't represent the people out in the countryside whatsoever, although in this case, in alliance with a relatively small group of right-wing

nationalists who are to the right of Putin. So you have these liberals to his left and these nationalists to his right, but they're the anti-Putin front. That's what they agree on, and that's what the Americans agree on too. And so the Americans, you know, led by at that time, I guess Michael McFaul and whatever, were blatantly supporting these protests and this alliance. And they even have quotes in the Times piece I'm thinking of where the liberals are saying, yeah, you know, this could come back to bite us in the ass later. But for now, you know, we've got to do what you can and this kind of thing. So to your point, you know, they're always calling Putin Hitler, but maybe Putin is Hindenburg and maybe Hitler is sitting there. You know what I mean?

Like I wouldn't be too afraid of Zirinovsky. I mean, he's a fool and a puppet anyway. I don't think he has much support either. But there are forces to Putin's right, probably men we've never heard of in the military and wherever else, that were he to be regime changed, we might not even get in a Volony type at all, but somebody maybe two or three clicks to the right of him, determined to retake Russian territory in Asia and Eastern Europe, and God knows what. Yeah, I mean, there are forces to the, there are hardliners that are more extreme than Putin who advocated since 2014. going much farther into Ukraine than Crimea, and Putin actually held them back. He was a restrainer, actually, and he's been criticized heavily for trusting into the Minsk Accord and thinking there was, we're Dombas and not going and solving the problem then.

Navalny was, he was the poster child of the opposition, and that's why the West sort of jumped on him and sort of overlook some of the other things. His popular in the West was great, and his popularity ever was in Russia, but it was what the West could grab onto to advocate for opposition to Putin. And you're right. He was thrown out of the Yabloko Party in 2007. They said they threw out for causing political damage to the party, which they called nationalist activities. And those nationalist activities were referring to immigrants as cockroaches and advocating, killing them. So you just have to be careful. But in the West, we overlook these things. We always do if we can grab onto a revolution or a color, color revolution to try to get rid of a regime.

And so it's important to look at Navalny for what he was. And it's important to give him credit where he deserves. He was brilliant. He was courageous. He fought this anti-corruption campaign. But he wasn't Martin Luther King and he wasn't Nelson Mandela. And he wasn't a foreign policy critic of Putin at all. He probably wouldn't have done anything different in Ukraine. so to use him to keep the war going in Ukraine as disingenuous. So it's important to give him accolades where he deserves it and to not erase history when that's important too. Yeah.

Well, I mean, especially when, and what the hell are they on about when this guy is like Ahmed Chalaby, he doesn't have the support. In fact, Chalaby had some support in Iraq because his family had bankrolled the upkeep of a certain Shiite shrine in Naja, if I believe it was. So he had a little bit of credibility there. Maybe this guy has a little bit, but the idea that they were going to, what, on their best day, make him the present, when he already doesn't have support, when he would be nothing but an American sock puppet and everybody would know it. Why would they think that they could ever get away with somehow, in their craziest daydreams,

Ted, thinking that it would come true someday that Navalny would be the president of Russia and then they'd be a compliant little puppy dog. Or perhaps they just thought that boosting Navalny was a way to support the opposition. I don't know whether they had faith that it would be him, but it was a way in I'm trying to get things moving. But Navalny really lost his ability to get people out into the streets. The numbers that he could get were low. And, you know, there was even polling showing, like in 2021, there was polling that showed

that, like, you know, about 19% of Russians, you know, kind of approved of activities, but less than 5% thought he was trustworthy. He didn't have this mass support like we think he did in the West. What he did, he should get credit for what he did. But he shouldn't be made into what he isn't, and we shouldn't be making assumptions before we know. And that's what Biden's doing. He's making assumptions before we know,

and then he's using those assumptions to try to keep a war going in a rather disingenuous way. And that's dangerous. That's risky. Yeah. And, of course, all other things being equal, It's not of America's damn business anyway. I mean, the world is lousy with governments that persecute political opponents, and they can complain about it.

But this whole thing where we wage an economic war against everybody who crosses us, especially at the height of the persecution of Assange. I mean, I just finished telling Muhammad Almazi, I got to go to interview Ted. After we just had this discussion about how they're going to extradite Julian Assange. It's the last ditch appeal to prevent them from burying this guy alive next to Ramsey Yousef in the Supermax. Right. Well, at the same time, you criticize Russia for allowing somebody to die in prison, you know, for being an opposition. But, you know, not being hypocritical has never been a strong suit of American foreign policy. Seriously.

Hey, by the way, just real quick, I'm sorry. We should do a whole other show on this, but can you talk to me a little bit about the Russian's recent victory at how do you say the name of the town here? I don't know. I say it. I say Avdivka, but I don't know. Close enough. Avdivka, something like that. I should have asked the old lady, she knows. But anyway, so it's a pretty big deal that they lost this town, huh? It's a very big deal. You won't see that in the Western media. The Western media calls it a symbolic victory because it's Putin's first victory since Bachmood. you'll see occasionally someone refer to it as a symbolic victory because it affects Ukrainian morale. The New York Times went as far the other day as to say, maybe it's more

significant than we thought, but they only did it because they said it affected Ukrainian morale. It's actually, I'm not a military tactician, Scott, but from what I read, it's a major victory. And it's a major victory for a couple of reasons. It was a heavily fortified town. So the Ukrainians have to withdraw now. So first of all, the line moves back. A lot of lot, but they have to withdraw to much harder to defend territories. But more importantly, Avdivka was sort of the gateway to the rest of the Donbass. If you can control Avdeka, then the Ukrainian line collapses, and Russia has a much greater opportunity now of controlling, you know, both of those regions and the Donbass that they

want to control. It's not a symbolic victory. It's a major strategic victory. And the other reason it's important, Scott, if we have a minute, and I think my next piece that'll be up with you guys will focus on this more but you know Zelensky really wanted to keep on this

attack war of attrition and he probably fired General Zolutioni because he knew that wouldn't work and he hired a general who would do what he said so he put the new general in and he told him defend Avdivka and they did and it went

exactly the way Zolucciini said it would and it collapsed a lot worse than the media is telling you I mean The reports at first said that Ukraine withdrew, and then there were hints that people said it was an orderly withdrawal that went well, and then there were hints that actually maybe wasn't so orderly and maybe some Ukrainians got captured or killed. Now there's reports that maybe 1,000, maybe 1,500 Ukrainian soldiers got captured or killed, and there's reports that even before that the town that they were organizing in, the Russians figured out they were there. and shelled them in kill thousands. It looks now like the attempt to defend Avdivka was a strategic disaster. And they not only lost this really important town, but they collapsed.

And the battalions seem to have run away and surrendered, been captured and killed. It was a devastating defeat for Ukraine and a really strategically significant. This could be a turning point in the war. This is not just a symbolic thing. It's a huge thing. And that's why, that's why, you know, why would, there's this question of why Putin would kill Navalny the day that happens. It's like, he didn't want to take away from that headline. So the two stories are connected, but I think it's a very important victory.

And we'll see in the next weeks and months whether Russia will now flood through Abdiqa and continue taking more towns and sealing up to Donbos. All right, everybody. That is Ted Snyder. He writes for us at anti-war.com and at Libertarian Institute.org and his latest is Biden knows. Putin killed Alexei Navalny. Thanks, Ted. Thanks so much, Scott. The Scott Horton show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.