Yves here. We’re featuring this John Helmer post from over the weekend because the Western chattering classes remain fixated on the death of Alexei Navalny, who despite their histrionics was a person of no consequence in Russia. For instance, to the extent Putin has any opposition now, it’s not from liberals, as in collective West allies like Navalny (who as Scott Ritter has pointed out, is actually a white supremacist, as Navalny video clips confirm) but the Communists, who have been upset since the start of the war that Putin has not been more aggressive. Ray McGovern has also set forth some of the apparently not-trivial evidence that Navalny was working with US and UK intelligence services.
Helmer describes below, as he did shorter form in a tweet, that Navalny was not in great health, and earlier, claims of Russian attempts on him that (in terms of their mechanics) were clear fabrications. That does not mean that Navalny did not die of foul play. It means that Western claims about what happened need to be taken with a mine full of salt.
By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
Since a pack of lies about Alexei Navalny (lead image, right) won last year’s Oscar for the best documentary film of the year when he was alive, there’s no doubt he can win another Oscar when he’s dead. But alive or dead, the prize-winning propaganda of Navalny’s story bears no resemblance to the truth. This is what happens in wartime, especially when the side which is losing the war on the battlefield – that’s the US, NATO and the Ukraine – claims to be winning the war of words against Russia.
The Navalny story is now in two parts: Part 1, the Novichok in his airport cup of tea, in his hotel water bottle, and then in his underpants which causes Navalny’s collapse, but fails to be detected by Russian doctors in Omsk, by German doctors in Berlin and Munich, and then by Swedish and French state laboratories. Part 2, Navalny’s sudden death after he had taken a walk in the IK-3 penal colony in the village of Kharp, in the Russian Arctic region of Yamalo-Nenets. The first part took 62 reports in this archive to expose the faking; the most telling evidence of this came from Navalny himself in the documented tests of his blood, urine and hair. According to these data, Navalny’s collapse was the outcome of an overdose of lithium, benzodiazepines, and other drugs.
Part 2 of the Navalny story began last Friday, February 16, with the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) announcement, followed by an official telegramme to his mother in Moscow, that he had died just after two in the afternoon, Yamalo-Nenets time; that was just after noon Moscow time. Two hours later the Russian media began carrying the official announcement. The wording of the last line of the announcement is significant. “The causes of death are being established”, the FSIN statement said. Causes — plural.
In the UK coroner’s court practice, what this means is that there is likely to have been a sequence of causation, medically speaking, with the first or proximate cause of death identified as heart, brain, or lung injury or failure; and the second, intervening or contributory cause of death such as biochemical factors, including prescription drugs in lethal combination; mRNA anti-Covid vaccination triggering fatal blood clots; or homicidal poisons. For example, in the case of the alleged Russian Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess in England in 2018, the evidence is of British government tampering with the post-mortem reports to add Novichok when it wasn’t identified at first.
In Navalny’s case, poisoning on the order of President Vladimir Putin has already been announced as the cause of Navalny’s death without evidence at all. The delay time required for the complicated processes of forensic pathology and toxicology to establish the evidence has been reported in the Anglo-American media to signify cover-up and body snatching. Meduza, an oppositionist publication in Riga, reports that “a doctor who advised Navalny’s associates” has said that blood clotting was “an unlikely cause of death” – this is medically false.
In speculation of poisoning as cause of death, there is at least as much likelihood that Navalny, his team, and their CIA and MI6 handlers devised a repeat of the August 2020 Tomsk operation; decided when Navalny met with his lawyer at the prison on February 14; but implemented two days later without the resuscitation Navalny himself was expecting.
The Anglo-American propaganda warfare army is already pronouncing the contributory Cause 2– Putin did it — as the cause of Navalny’s death. If the Russians announce the proximate Cause 1 as cardiac arrest or brain aneurism, without a Cause 2, they won’t be believed. In the short term, Cause 2 cannot be established with credibility in Russia since it took the British government ten years, 2006-2016, to fabricate their story of Russian polonium poisoning in the Alexander Litvinenko case. In the Russian Novichok cases in England, it has so far taken six years of court, police and pathologist proceedings, 2018-2024, without outcome, and another two years will follow.
The problem for readers to interpret what has happened is that the Anglo-American propaganda warfare machine is better at what it does than the Russian side. But then when it comes to war with guns, not words, the Russian side is far superior, as can be seen in the Ukraine right now. Accordingly, the Kremlin has decided to concentrate on the main fight. Inside Russia, it has been obvious for a long time that in or out of prison, Navalny alive was politically insignificant; now even less. The new western propaganda is as ineffectual for Russians as Navalny was himself.
And so the purpose of the propaganda is different. President Joseph Biden’s statement on Navalny’s death makes this clear. “This tragedy reminds us of the stakes of this moment. We have to provide the funding so Ukraine can keep defending itself against Putin’s vicious onslaughts and war crimes. You know, there was a bipartisan Senate vote that passed overwhelmingly in the United States Senate to fund Ukraine. Now, as I’ve said before, and I mean this in the literal sense: History is watching. History is watching the House of Representatives. The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It’s going to go down in the pages of history. It really is. It’s consequential.”
For the German blood and urine proof of Navalny’s lithium and benzodiazepine addiction, start here and here. For the evidence from testing of Navalny’s hair, click.
The scientific research indicating the blood-clot risk from the coronavirus mRNA vaccines is summarized in many places; for example, here.
The medical consensus on the risk of combining benzodiazepines with other drugs through liver enzyme failure and fatal tachycardia has been documented here. Russian doctors typically prescribe a benzodiazepine called Grandaxin (tofisopam in the west) for reducing bipolar mood swings, diffuse anxiety, and panic attacks. If combined with a sedative also commonly prescribed in Russia for sleeplessness and branded as Teraligen (alimemazine), the risk of liver enzyme failure leading to heart attack is not as well known as it is in the US and UK, and not monitored by regular liver testing. Navalny, his family, and his organization have never acknowledged his prior medical conditions, nor the medications he has been taking. To date, however, they have made no complaints against the Federal Penitentiary Service for depriving Navalny of the medicines he has requested. It remains to be seen whether the family or the prison service releases these personal data now.
Listen to the Gorilla Radio discussion with Chris Cook, recorded over sixty minutes on Sunday morning Moscow time, February 18:
Click on link to listen: https://gradio.substack.com/
There is a notable difference between the US and NATO leaders on what happened to Navalny. In the wording Biden read out in his press conference, he said: “make no mistake — make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible.” When pressed by a reporter to clarify “was this an assassination?” the president said: “The answer is, I — we don’t know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something that Putin and his — and his thugs did.”
The innuendo of murder does not (repeat not) appear in the statements by the French, German and British leaders.
Source: https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/
Source: https://www.bundeskanzler.de
Source: https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/
The most loyal among the small allies of the US were also reluctant to repeat Biden’s claim and followed the French and British lead instead. Their remarks indicate the US is failing to hold its front against the Russians.
Canadian government leaders were circumspect on the cause of Navalny’s death; the one Canadian exception was Bob Rae, the former Ontario premier and currently Canadian representative at the United Nations. Rae tweeted: “Putin murdered #Navalny just as surely as if he’d strangled him with his bare hands.”
The Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, stopped short of charging homicide, but imitated Biden: “We hold the Russian Government solely responsible for his treatment and death in prison.”
The New Zealand government was more cautious. Foreign Minister Winston Peters told reporters Navalny’s death was “untimely…Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon tweeted he was “saddened to hear of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death. He was a fierce advocate of freedom and anti-corruption.” When pressed by a reporter, Luxon added that he might talk to the Russian ambassador.
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https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/02/17/crocodile-tears-over-navalny-while-ignoring-assange/
More and more it seems like the last decade has been all about worshiping the shakers while vilifying the doers.
They slander giving factual infodumps as autistic while holding up long fluffy articles filled with purple prose about the author’s lunch as high art.
The fourth power has gotten high on its own supply and lost its way.
Of course neither Putin nor the Russian government had any motive to kill Navalnyii. Doesn’t matter, they will be blamed, no evidence needed, just as anyone who points out, fr example, the absurdities of the official story concerning Jeffrey Epstein’s death will be branded a loon.
Of course, Navalnyii was no saint, to put it mildly. Doesn’t matter, those who control the narrative are the ones who decide.
My friend who is an electrician some 200km from Moscow says “it’s a fact Navalnyi died. However, nobody cares. Being a liberal in Russia is a dirty word and it does not mean the same as in the West.” I suppose he meant N.’s supremacist ideals.
The Assange extradition is going on in London!
While Edward Snowden is safe in Rssia.
And all they revealed has been memory holed…
Thanks to the revival of Russia-gate that connected Trump and Putin, liberals have been conditioned to believe that Vladimir Putin wants to revive the Russian Empire and invaded Ukraine because it “is a country that for decades has enjoyed freedom and democracy and the right to choose its own destiny”, among other tall tales.
The upshot is that New York Times reading liberals have been conditioned to believe that Putin whacked Navalny in prison just because he’e the personification of evil, even as it would serve no purpose and moreover provide the West a propaganda coup. Likewise, all the good little liberals firmly believe that Trump was only elected due to the virulent racism of the MAGA deplorables and is in no way related to the off-shoring of American manufacturing and unchecked immigration that have provided them with cheap electronics, fattened stock portfolios and affordable nannies, gardeners and maids.
Not just the Russian Empire, the USSR and then some. The neoliberals have basically reanimated the red scare while claiming they are fighting nazis…
“They hate us for our freedom!” Whoever “they” are this year. But the public never learns. Goebbels was absolutely correct about the Big Lie.
Also easier to maintain the big lie when the only land border of consequence is the smaller southern one.
Never mind being able to go from the beaches of California or Miami to the slopes of Colorado within one’s own nation.
Conditioned by the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html
September 22, 2014
Snap Out of It
By David Brooks
President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a lone thug sitting atop a failing regime….
October 21, 2014
Putin and the Pope
By Thomas L. Friedman
One keeps surprising us with his capacity for empathy, the other by how much he has become a first-class jerk and thug….
December 20, 2014
Who’s Playing Marbles Now?
By Thomas L. Friedman
Let us not mince words: Vladimir Putin is a delusional thug….
December 21, 2014
Conquest Is for Losers: Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion
By Paul Krugman
Remember, he’s an ex-K.G.B. man — which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug….
January 27, 2015
Czar Putin’s Next Moves
By Thomas L. Friedman
ZURICH — If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine’s new democratic experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be in danger….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/middleeast/white-house-split-on-opening-talks-with-putin.html
September 15, 2015
Obama Weighing Talks With Putin on Syrian Crisis
By PETER BAKER and ANDREW E. KRAMER
WASHINGTON — Mr. Obama views Mr. Putin as a thug, according to
advisers and analysts….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/mr-putins-mixed-messages-on-syria.html
September 20, 2015
Mr. Putin’s Mixed Messages on Syria
Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say….
Putin is evil!
He alone prevented Obama, having armed al Qaeda and Daish, was not giving Syria to Sunni extremists.
He alone prevented Obama, having armed al Qaeda and Daesh…
[ A devastating comment:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html
June 21, 2012
C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition
By ERIC SCHMITT
A small number of American officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping decide which Syrian rebel fighters across the border will receive arms. ]
He alone prevented Obama, having armed al Qaeda and Daesh…
[ Russia then prevented the most terrifying outcome in Syria:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html
August 2, 2017
Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War
By MARK MAZZETTI, ADAM GOLDMAN and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
The shuttering of the C.I.A. program, one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train Syrian rebels since the 1980s, has forced a reckoning over its successes and failures. ]
The New York Times described a senior Russian Studies professor from Princeton and NYU as a “villain” for trying to explain the crisis that was being prepared in Ukraine:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/opinion/a-russia-scholars-views.html
A Russia Scholar’s Views
To the Editor:
“Russia Experts See Ranks Thin, and an Effect on U.S. Policy”: * I protest the way my views and I were characterized in your article. I am called the “dissenting villain” in today’s media commentary on Ukraine who presents a “perspective closer to that of Mr. Putin.” This may have the effect (intended or not) of stigmatizing me and discrediting my views…
STEPHEN F. COHEN
Whatever you think about Navalny, Russia holding his body for another two weeks to perform “chemical analisis” is a sure way to keep speculation about his death very much alive.
in a no-win situation against Western propaganda (Russiaphobes will believe, as opposed to speculate about, what they need to believe), Russia keeping N’s corpse for testing seems more than prudent, indeed necessary, imho.
Was Jeffrey Epstein’s body released right away?
Pretend that Epstein had died in a Russian lockup under similarly ludicrous circumstances. The MSM and western leaders would waste no time proclaiming him murdered, no contrary evidence needed or wanted, and we’d be hearing nothing but fevered speculation on every news program, ESPN included.
If Russia believes that he was assassinated by the Western intelligence services, it is reasonable that it would take a long time for an investigation to find any trace of it.
You do not watch enough crime shows! Toxicology takes a long time.
https://www.co.walworth.wi.us/Faq.aspx?QID=172
Thanks, I learned something new there. But the way toxicology tests work is no different than other tests, they analize samples. There is no real need to hold onto the body while waiting for the test results.
Unless those doing the analysis have a legitimate fear that the body could be tampered with after releasing it?
I am unclear about why Navalny was in prison in the first place. It seems like it would have been in Russia’s interest to get him out of the country and let the West be responsible for him.
iirc, he was found guilty of embezzlement… not a “political” crime. In last week’s Gray Zone Live, Aaron Mate says he voluntarily returned to Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgzMwzvRlM&ab_channel=TheGrayzone
Ritter gave an excellent gloss on Navalny. I wish I could recall the parts on his earlier life, how he was selected for a program run out of Yale to identify and train CIA assets. Ritter had other early evidence of CIA connections. Ray McGovern said there was a pretty damning recording of a Navalny personal aide (it sounded like accepting a bribe).
Ritter said that Navalny was allowed to leave Russia but returned to fight his criminal case. Ritter is highly confident that this was due to CIA advice, that there would be political upheaval when he lost at trial (the evidence against him was very strong) and that Putin would be overthrown. Of course none of that happened. There weren’t even serious protests during his trial.
Ritter said he was charged for embezzlement and not espionage because if he had been convicted of espionage, he eventually would be swapped for other spies.
This may be the video you are thinking about….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv49PYBeds&t=2114s
…Ritter certainly did not hold anything back here.
I saw a tweet by Craig Murray who bascially said that if Navalny was British and would’ve have done what he did (bascially treason though the Russians never charged him for that) he would’ve have been punished much much harder, i.e. life long sentence.
Crazy thing is that he was out of the country, getting treatment for a supposed poisoning, but chose to go back.
See my comment above. Ritter believes the CIA encouraged him to return because of course there would be a revolt when Navalny was convicted.
He was charged along with his brother with fraud and embezzlement, around 2012, was discharged, and then violated his parole, and they informed him he would likely be arrested and imprisoned if he returned to Russia but nevertheless he returned home, so he essentially put himself in prison.
Whether he was a CIA asset or not, I strongly suspect it was a political maneuver. Maybe he really did expect an uprising, though that sounds almost too delusional to be true. (Then again, Khodorkovsky reportedly thought the billionaires of the world would back him up against Putin, so there is precedent.) Maybe he simply realised that he would lose all relevance if he stayed abroad, while going back would at least give him some credibility for the future. (It is true that he was never a real threat to Putin, but at the same time he was the closest thing the liberals had to a leader post-Nemtsov, so he did have some relevance to lose.)
Thanks for these insights.
Which liberals – Russian or Western? Uninformed US liberals think he’s part of their club, but he seems pretty right leaning from the things I’ve seen about him that don’t come from Western sources. It is admittedly difficult to get a good read on these things though.
He seems like a political huckster to me, regardless of his leanings (if he has any sincere beliefs to begin with), making a living from the grift. For whatever reason, the US comparison that came to mind was Tim Eyman, who is very little known in the US, but has made himself a pain in the a** for a while now, – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Eyman
Russian liberals. Who are generally to the right of American liberals, yes, and Navalny spent some time straddling the line between those right-wing liberals and far right nationalists before shifting back towards their centre. As for what he actually believed, I have no idea. I will say that his strength compared to typical liberals was in his flexibility; he could cosy up to the far right or speak out in favour of the welfare state (whereas many of our liberals hate both). In that regard you might say he had more in common with Donald Trump.
I haven’t heard of Eyman before, but from skimming the article, he does have some parallels there too. Just imagine if Trump won another term, the Democrats managed to completely unravel, and Eyman somehow found himself as the new heroic figurehead of the Resistance.
As for Russian liberals, I’d say they are kind of like the worst of both worlds between American Republicans and Democrats. They have the self-righteous “socially enlightened” condescension of the latter and the often overt antipathy towards the poor and non-Jewish ethnic minorities of the former. In terms of policy they tend to fixate on free market, free speech and anti-corruption issues (the latter despite many liberal politicians being themselves significantly corrupt). What they generally lack is religious fundamentalism, although they have lionised some sufficiently anti-government religious fundamentalists in the past.
Part of the embezzlement was that he claimed he was a lawyer, even though neither he or his claimed alma mater could provide any proof. In his trial after return he did conduct his own defense by basically constantly insulting the judge and prosecutor.
Thank you NC for posting things that are well researched and go against the absurd consensus stories that are so transparent. The one country vetoing a Gaza ceasefire might be the source of biased views on things. Who knew?!?
It’s obvious: on Valentine’s Day his wife (who is really his daughter – bloody Russians) brought him a gift of a bottle of novichok-laced perfume in a sealed plastic bag, which he drank for the alcohol content, causing him to collapse, and the paramedics then put his gurney into the ambulance backwards, which set off a nuclear explosion. The date for the inquest is expected in 20-get-back-to-us-later(ish).
My favourite article on Navalny is from Mark Ames’ paper The eXile (from 2011):
http://exiledonline.com/russian-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-uniting-nationalists-and-the-urban-educated-middle-class/
Ames knows Russia.
Kinda.
Ames severely overestimated Navalny, but then again a lot of people did at the time. In retrospect that was his absolute peak. Then most of the nationalists and half the liberals turned on him, and he had to stake out a more West-friendly position, which (in absence of a revolution) meant that what near-term political future he once might have had swiftly collapsed. All that remained was the long term, and now that’s gone as well.
Ah yes the academic middle class, the same one that was supposed to kick Putin to the curb once the SMO sanctions started hurting. Instead they packed their laptops and booked it over the nearest border.
Ames has made a lot of bad calls on the SMO. He seems to visually hate Putin and lets that hatred distort his analysis. Frankly his view on Russia are so unsound that it’s hard for me to take anything else he says seriously.
The weird thing is it was Medvedev and not Putin who shut down The eXile. Putin tolerated The eXile having several outrageous pieces of cover art….
Yves – I did not put 2 and 2 together on how it was Medvedev who was in power when The eXile was shut down. That makes everything make more sense to me.
Nalvany was killed by the Brits, that’s what people are speculating. I tend to believe. Putin had nothing to gain by killing him, he was a nobody. The West needed someone to have some momentum about funding the Ukraine losers. Cui bono, the West needed his death and he was totally disposable.
1) How did the Brits pull it off?
2) What does his death actually allow the West to do that the West was not going to do anyway under any pretext?
Many Ukrainians speak perfect Russian and have spent years in Russia. Infiltrating the prison and paying someone is certainly something we see in the US. It is risky to be a high profile prisoner in prison in the US too. Think Chauvin. Putin should have had him in a safe place knowing the political issues with the west. A golden bridcage or else have sent him overseas.
Nice complementary information from Helmer to add to Ritter’s remarks re Navalny on Ania K’s youtube interview with him, which Yves quotes rather well from memory. That interview is here::
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk6eZIsp7N4
Meanwhile, on the basis of nothing but the timing of Navalny’s death compared to previous attempts to discredit Putin’s upcoming presidential elections, Doctorow, McGovern and Larry Johnson claim the British done it through Ukrainian proxies bribing prison guards or the penal colony cooks, medical staff, the janitorial staff or whomever.had their hand out for some baksheesh. Plus of course, well, lookee here, Navalny’s wife was at the Munich Conference on cue. Rushed to it, more like, along with her new boyfriend. So the pro-Russian punditry world is as full of conspiracy theories as anywhere else.
Boil it all down, and if you want to get to the core of the Israeli/Gaza mess, read/listen to Alastair Crooke via his writings and on Judge Nap. On high level Russia/Ukraine, it’s Ritter. Then Yves adds Helmer consistently, and provides a sharp summing up. All you really need to know.
I mean, the batsh!t crazy Western OTT reaction to Navalny’s demise was amazing, but nobody I know gives a damn. That’s just our leaders fulminating and reinforcing each other’s distorted view of the world, while they slow-boil their own citizenry with utter nonsense.
If Russia really wanted Navalny dead, it would not have bothered to arrest and try him; the Russian helicopter pilot who killed two crew members and “defected” to Ukraine for a $500,000 reward was recently found shot to death. He had received death threats from Russian agents, and the head of Russian intelligence hinted at, but did not deny, involvement in his death.
Jacques Baud wrote a book on the Navalny case and the Postil interviewed Baud last year when the movie came out. Baud goes into Navalny’s connection with the U.S. Yale-based young leaders program that neocons, and presumably the cia, set up to train future post-coup officials, like Juan Guaido. (They seem to favor the tall and good-looking prospects.) Baud also investigated the poisoning charges from some years ago.
https://www.thepostil.com/alexei-navalny-the-real-story/
Oh, this is great. Baud is always very precise so I will read with interest.
I logged into the NYT this morning (Feb. 20, 2024) to find five separate articles on Navalny on their electronic front page. FIVE! This for an obscure Russian that most Americans know nothing about–except what the anti-Putin propaganda mills have turned out–if that.
Quite a contrast to how the MSM treated the death in prison of Jeffrey Epstein, a story they couldn’t bury fast enough.
We got the same obligatory blast of aghastitude up here in the Globe and Mail on the weekend.
At least that Archduke Franz Ferdinand guy had a cool Rollie Fingers mustache. Nobody in Flyover cares about Navalny.
Flyover is far to busy making ends meet to care about most anything abroad.
Al who?
Brian Berletic has a post up about connections between Navalny and the NED via cables publicized by Wikileaks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uRXkw3_0BE
I am appalled whenever I read of a person dying in prison, anywhere. Navalny may well have been some kind of nut, but the known circumstances surrounding his death are troubling. The government of any country has some level of culpability when someone dies in its custody.
However, I find it impossible to swallow evidence-free statements that a flea can’t fart in Russia without the permission of some Oz-like figure called Putin!!! After going to all the effort to be interviewed by Tucker Carlson last week, President Putin appears to be the last person who would benefit from the timing of Navalny’s suspicious death.
The events of just this past June, when mobster Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private-contract army shot-down multiple Russian Federation aircraft including an Il-22M Airborne Command Post during their tragi-comic “March on Moscow” and his subsequent demise suggest that things in Russia are far more chaotic than American propaganda and our feeble-minded President would have us believe.
At this juncture, it is just as likely that some person or persons inside Russia were sending President Putin a message through the death of Navalny so close to Putin’s star turn before an American audience. Putin’s string of mea-culpas for delaying action in Ukraine suggest to me that he is under political pressure domestically for exhibiting weakness.
Let’s see what credible evidence is presented in due course after the forensic autopsy before jumping to conclusions about who is responsible for Navalny’s untimely demise.
Amen, David in Friday Harbor. Death in jails bothers me as well. Lawyers tend to want evidence, regardless of how weird the defendant. As for looking into Lira’s demise, I’m all for it. I don’t care who it is that dies or what one thinks of them.
Which is more absurd?
1. Yulia Navalnaya’s (I don’t even know what to call it) maybe grief grift relief tour.
2. The media’s fawning/dominant coverage/promotion of this. (top of ma algos all week including right now.)
3. Anyone thinking I’m buying.
I am shocked that Juan Guido outlived him.
And also shocked that Naked Capitalism didn’t run a “Failed US Regime Change Stooge Death Pool” for us to bet on.
I don’t know if anyone has posted this link here (sorry that I didn’t get to read the comments), but I highly recommend reading Niccolo Soldo’s hilariously sarcastic “hagiography” of Navalny published today, “A Tribute to Saint Alexei, Patron Saint of Liberal Democracy: I didn’t even know he was sick“
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/a-tribute-to-saint-alexei-patron?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
New piece from Ritter on Navalny today. Part 1.
https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/the-tragic-death-of-a-traitor
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrel has demanded an ‘international investigation’ into Navalny’s death. The Russians should counter with a demand for an international investigation into Gonzalo Lira’s death. Alex Christoforou was showing how fifteen minutes after Navaly’s death, one western government was condemning this after another in a sort of clockwork motion – one after another and only minutes apart is quite a feat. People like Navalny forget that when they work for the CIA, that the CIA will calculate if they are worth more either blown or killed after they have gotten as much value out of them that they can. Was he killed? Probably not. But if it was an indirect result of a certain vaccine he received when he was being treated in Germany, I would not be surprised. I wonder which country is going to be the first to raise a statue to him in his honour. Probably one of the Baltic nations.
If Russia cared what Borrel says they could reply by demanding international investigation into Litvinenkov’s death. Or the Skripal case. Or the Butcha massacre. Or the Nord Stream attack.
Oh, wait, I think they kinda have…
Russian Foreign Ministry published a useful overview of the reactions. One would think that betraying your country and continent, destroying its economy into Puerto Rico poverty would be a full-time job, but apparently these WEF-people are loafing around on Twitter.
So why is Tobias Billström, the Foreign Minister of Sweden (possibly) that always wears a Swedish-Ukrainian flagpin on his chest, or his staff reading the weebsite of a prison in Russia? Is he dreaming of future penal colonies for dissidents in Sweden too. 15 minutes reaction-time.
Today, at approximately 14:19, the website of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District published a report on the death of convict Alexei Navalny in penal colony No. 3.
Literally 15 minutes later, a torrent of copycat accusations started pouring in:
– 14:35 – Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Tobias Billström: “Terrible news about Navalny. If the information about his death in a Russian prison is confirmed, it will be another heinous crime of Putin’s regime.”
– 14:35 – Norway’s minindel Bart Eide: “Deeply saddened by the news of Navalny’s death. The Russian government bears a heavy burden of responsibility for this.”
– 14:41 – Latvian Minister of State Edgars Rinkevics: “Whatever you think of Navalny as a politician, he has just been brutally murdered by the Kremlin. This is a fact and something that everyone should know about the true nature of the current Russian regime.”
– 14:50 – Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavsky: “Russia still treats foreign policy issues the same way it treats its citizens. It has turned into a brutal state that kills people who dream of a beautiful, better future, such as Nemtsov and now Navalny, who was imprisoned and tortured to death.”
– 14:51 – French Minister of State Stéphane Sejournet: “Navalny paid with his life to fight against a system of oppression. His death in a penal colony reminds us of the realities of Vladimir Putin’s regime.”
– 15:02 – President of the European Council Charles Michel: “The EU holds the Russian regime solely responsible for this tragedy”.
– 15:10 (during the press conference) – Kiev regime leader Zelensky: “Obviously, he was killed by Putin, like thousands of other tortured people”.
– 15:16 (in the media), 16:50 (on social networks) – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: “Russia must establish all the facts, answer very serious questions.”
– 15:20 – Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte: “Navalny’s death illustrates the unprecedented brutality of the Russian regime.”
– 15:30 – Moldovan President Maia Sandu: “Navalny’s death in a Russian prison is a reminder of the regime’s blatant oppression of dissent”;
– 15:35 – German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock: “Navalny, more than anyone else, was a symbol of a free and democratic Russia. That is why he had to die.”
– 15:43 – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “A grim reminder of what Putin and his regime are all about.”
– 15:49 – Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson: “The Russian authorities and President Putin personally are responsible for the fact that Navalny is no longer with us.”
– 16:14 – FRG Chancellor Olaf Scholz: “Navalny paid with his death for his courage. This terrible news demonstrates once again how Russia has changed and what kind of regime is in power in Moscow.”
– 16:25 – U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: “Navalny’s death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system Putin has built. Russia bears responsibility for this.”
– 17:28 – French President Emmanuel Macron: “In today’s Russia, free people are placed in gulags and sentenced to death.”
In a short period of time, within two hours (from 14:19), Western politicians and their handmaiden media managed, as if to get the results of a forensic examination that had not yet been conducted, to investigate, accuse Moscow and deliver a verdict.
https://t.me/MID_Russia/35256
Swedes should stfu and finally disclose who killed Ulof Palme who stood for peace and therefore had to be eliminated.
In South Africa, the white-owned media which supported apartheid are calling Navalny “the Russian Mandela”. They don’t seem to understand that Mandela wasn’t sent to jail for embezzlement, and also that his party, when it was allowed to put up candidates after eighty-two years of suppression, got ten times as much of the vote as Navalny’s did.
But unfortunately our media are even more spineless lapdogs than the NATO media from which they get all their material.