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CNN This Morning

Russian Prison Service Says, Alexey Navalny Dead at 47. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 16, 2024 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Belongs to him or his family members.

[07:00:02]

January 2021, Navalny returned to Moscow after receiving life-saving treatment in Germany. He was immediately arrested for violating probation terms imposed from a 2014 case and sent to a penal colony where he went on hunger strike protesting against prison officials' refusal to grant him access to proper medical care.

He'll be remembered for his bravery in tackling corruption across Russia and as one of Vladimir Putin's biggest adversaries.

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ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Erica Hill with Omar Jimenez in New York. Poppy and Phil are off this morning.

We begin this hour with the breaking news out of Russia. The Russian Prison Service reporting opposition leader Alexey Navalny has died in prison. Again, this information coming from the country's prison service. Navalny was 47 years old. The cause of his death at this hour is a mystery.

We do have team coverage for you this hour. We want to begin with Nick Paton Walsh, who is in Munich.

You are there for the Munich Security Conference. This will likely change a lot of those discussions. Before we get to that impact, though, Nick, just give us a sense of where things stand this morning, given that we are learning from the prison service that Alexey Navalny has in fact died.

NICK PATON WALSH, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, we don't have independent confirmation, but, frankly, given how information functions in Putin's Russia, it's as close to it as you might expect.

The prison service itself, from the region where Alexey Navalny was incarcerated, near the Arctic Circle, very tough conditions in colony number three there, saying that he lost consciousness during a walk on the morning of February the 16th, and doctors were unable to revive him.

Now, we are not hearing from his team confirmation, as I say, and they are dependent on information from the prison service, and indeed, apparently, his lawyer is traveling to Kharp, the city in the Yamalo- Nenets Autonomous Region, where that prison is located.

But given what we know about the fate of opposition figures in Putin's Russia, the fate indeed, even of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Putin confidant who turned against him last year and then died in a suspicious plane crash, it seems reasonable at this stage to suggest that Alexey Navalny, one of the most charismatic and prominent opposition figures Russia has indeed known, certainly the most prominent of the Putin era, has lost his life.

Now, already, we are hearing leading European politicians pointing the finger at the Kremlin, the president of Latvia, saying that he has been murdered by the Putin regime and encouraging people to, while they feel condolences for his family, to remember that clear fact. The president of Norway saying, indeed, that the Russian government spares a heavy responsibility for Navalny's death.

And so while information at this stage is pretty scant, and as I say, you know, we may never get that fully independent confirmation of exactly what happened here, it does appear that Alexey Navalny is dead.

Now, that's important, obviously, because it shows us something about how Vladimir Putin feels at this particular time. Navalny was pretty much as far out of the way as you could put him. Yes, he was still able to occasionally communicate through a loyalty and through social media, but he was out, it seems, of the political arena. He never really got a foothold in the electoral process. Nobody does, apart from Vladimir Putin, realistically, in his Russia. Yet still, Vladimir Putin felt a degree of threat.

Now, I should remind you that this is going to take over the discussions behind me here, discussions that were being overshadowed by Trump -- former Trump remarks about NATO members not paying their dues and potentially him goading Putin on to attack them. And this is Vladimir Putin's threat at its clearest, at its most real, and possibly also too, maybe, at its most paranoid.

Navalny, as I say, was kind of out of the way in that Arctic prison, yet still it appears that his death occurred, most fair to say, certainly within the custody or duty of care of the Russian government itself.

We are due to hear in the next hour or so from Vice President Kamala Harris. She has remarks prepared to try and project confidence, reassurance that the United States would stick with its NATO allies. You know, many people here knew that Trump felt that way about Russia and about NATO, but still to be reminded the possibility that the end of the year, indeed, that may loom again as a threat and Europe may have to go it alone, very key here.

But, ultimately, you could not have a more sole reminder of the urgency of the danger that Vladimir Putin places to Europe with the Ukraine war entering into its third year and to his own population and that autocratic environment than what we've heard today, the horrifying death of Alexey Navalny, a courageous opposition figure in Russia, persistent, even when jailed in the most harsh conditions Russia could find.

Remember, the Arctic Circle in Siberia, a tough place to survive, frankly, even if you are not the leading figure against the Putin government, but yet again another opposition figure who's opposed Vladimir Putin, who was met a suspicious, if not ,according to some Ukrainian -- European politicians already, murderous end.

[07:05:12]

Back to you.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. And, Nick, obviously will be the top of discussion for the Munich Security Conference there, where, again, global leaders are meeting on that very topic, security.

And along those lines, I do want to bring in David Sanger, I want to bring him back, CNN political and national security analyst.

So, David, look, as some of what Nick spoke about, whether it's Yevgeny Prigozhin, of course, now we don't have the specific blame here in regards to Alexey Navalny, but we know that he has been an opposition leader to the Kremlin or whether it's Russian beliefs about invading Ukraine, does this latest chapter create a broader concern for NATO countries, for example, some of those that will be meeting at the security conference?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: If I'm in Munich too, and I can tell you that this concern has been a very deep one, even before the Navalny news, I was with U.S. officials this morning in Munich, and I don't think they had any indication that this was coming.

But they've been concerned about Navalny, and he was really the most remarkable figure, because even in jail, even in the Arctic, the symbol of his opposition and his ability to get out messages periodically really was the last bastion of opposition to Putin in Russia.

If you think about it, obviously they tried to kill him many times, but in the past six months we've seen the Prigozhin uprising put down and Prigozhin himself died in an airplane crash. As elections approach in Russia, this is the very last major dissident, and what it tells you is, first of all, Putin was feeling nervous, second of all, that he knows the work he's headed into years of confrontation with the west, particularly as the Ukraine war goes on. And he wants to be in a position where there is no chipping away of his power in Russia.

I don't know that Navalny's death will achieve that for him. I suspect that Navalny could be powerful beyond the grave as a symbol of opposition, continuing opposition to Putin. But it certainly puts him out of the way at a moment that the Europeans are both nervous about the United States and wondering how they prepare themselves for years of confrontation with a country that they thought just a few years ago was going to become part of Europe.

HILL: Yes. There were already major concerns heading into this conference. The conversation has certainly changed just in the last 20 minutes or so.

Also, I want to bring in Clarissa Ward, CNN's Chief International Correspondent.

Clarissa, picking up on where David left off there in terms of the influence of Alexey Navalny, you told us last hour, you asked him why he was going back when he decided to go back to Russia. And he said he would never give Putin such a gift to not continue to serve the Russian people.

How does his influence and how strong do you think it will be? How does it continue in these moments? Because I imagine it certainly will.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): I think there's no question that in death his message and his courage may be even more compelling and more powerful and possibly even more of a threat, although I think it's always easy to get ahead of ourselves on that front in terms of understanding the sort of broader perspective of the Russian people.

But Alexey Navalny really established himself as the anti-Putin on every level, even down to a personal level. And I think it's important that we acknowledge right now, in addition to being an extraordinarily courageous dissident, Alexey Navalny was a devoted husband to Yulia Navalnaya. Indeed, the final message that he put out on his Telegram channel was a Valentine's message to Yulia on February 14th. He's a father of Dasha and Zakhar, his two children.

And the whole way in which he presented himself was as approachable, down to earth, not hugely wealthy, loving his wife, hanging out with his kids. And it's in such stark contrast to what we see with President Putin, who has been married once and divorced and has various reports of illegitimate children, but we don't really see them. They're not in the public eye. And his whole manner is precisely predicated on this idea of being untouchable and extremely formal. And we have no sense of what he is like behind the curtain, so to speak.

[07:10:05]

And he was able to touch people, I think, particularly because he honed in on the issue of corruption, because Russian people, while they may be willing to tolerate a lot, and while they may have different views about democracy than the west does, they definitely felt an indignant at the amount of money that Putin's kleptocracy was stealing from ordinary people and squirreling away and whether it was building huge palaces on the Black Sea to the tune of a billion dollars.

Alexey Navalny and his team were there documenting it, sending drones over the former President Dmitry Medvedev's boat home (ph) in the countryside, worth reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars, and exposing the greed and exposing the corruption, and really making it so clear to ordinary Russians that their money and their country's wealth were being stolen from them.

And what's fascinating to me, though, is that President Putin, in this moment, whereas you heard Nick Paton Walsh say earlier, did Navalny any longer really pose a threat to Putin? He was languishing in this very remote penal colony. He had terrible health issues. Yes, he was still able to maintain a voice, but he didn't pose any significant or substantial threat to Vladimir Putin in terms of taking power or being able to run an election or being able to launch some kind of an uprising.

And so why did this happen in this moment? Is it possible? Of course, we know that Navalny had many health issues over the last few years, in which he has been held in very brutal and challenging circumstances. He has repeatedly talked about significant problems with his stomach. He was on hunger strike for a while. He reported being heavily overmedicated at one stage.

But one has to wonder why, at this moment, one would either choose to kill Alexey Navalny if that's what has happened or even if it has happened in a sort of slower, more subtle way, it's still clearly not subtle. And so what message is one telegraphing with this? Is this really the last gasp then for any voice of dissidence, of criticism in Russia and now that has been stomped out once and for all, or does this create another window for people who might be extraordinarily courageous, like Navalny, to continue to speak out?

JIMENEZ: And just to catch some folks up, the Kremlin spokesman does say that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed of reports of Alexey Navalny's death. That's according to state-run media. But the spokesperson for election Navalny says that while these reports are spreading, they have no confirmation of this just yet. Alexey's lawyer is currently on the way to that prison site. So, we'll update if we get more information from the Navalny spokesperson.

But, Clarissa, what I wanted to ask you is that you've obviously spoken with Navalny several times over the past few years. Obviously, going back to August 2020, that's when he was poisoned. He makes the decision to come back to Russia in 2021. Did you ever get the sense that he was concerned for his well-being at all?

WARD (voice over): No. I think he was genuinely one of those extraordinary individuals, and that's not a word I use lightly. But in conversations with him, it was clear to me that he was wired differently. He genuinely placed his belief and his mission and the people that he saw himself as being in service to ahead of his personal needs, desires, and, of course, his own personal security.

It takes a very, very specific type of mindset to survive being poisoned with Novichok, being in a coma, and just by really a fluke and luck surviving that and waking up and going through the rehabilitation process and being surrounded by your family, who you love so much, who you are so close with, and making the agonizing decision to go back, to risk it all again, to be separated from your family again.

[07:15:02]

And what's fascinating to me is that, for Alexey, at least -- or for Navalny, at least on the surface of it, it wasn't an agonizing decision. It was an obvious decision. It was a decision he had made even before he consulted with other people.

And when you spoke to those closest to him and in his inner circle, there had obviously been conversations about whether this was sensible, whether he would indeed survive it. But he knew what he was meant to do, and he believed fervently in that. And I think he saw himself as a sort of Nelson Mandela figure for the Russian people.

The broader question that always lurked in the background was, is Russia ready for a Nelson Mandela figure in this moment? And now, as we see in this dark, dark day, was Vladimir Putin ever going to accept, even if it posed only the most minimal threat, the existence of a Nelson Mandela-type of figure, even in the background on Russian territory?

And so he clearly was cut from a different cloth than the vast majority of people. And he had this extraordinary clarity of thought about him. He really understood implicitly what he believed he was meant to do in any given moment. And that is what made him so compelling as a leader.

And while he never really had the opportunity to run for office in a conventional way, although he had tried, he was struck from the ballot when he tried to run for the mayor of Moscow, but he was able to galvanize millions, hundreds of millions of views on YouTube and followers online for the content that he was producing, which was undermining the -- not just the role that the Kremlin was playing, the crimes that they were committing, but also the competence or lack thereof with which they were running the country.

HILL: And undercutting their message in so many ways that they were have been trying so hard to put out there.

Clarissa, stay with us. I also want to get back to Nick Paton Walsh who is there at the Munich Security Conference. If you're just joining us, obviously, this is a major topic of conversation. This will change those conversations there.

As I understand it, Nick, President Zelenskyy is actually speaking right now. We're going to continue to monitor those remarks. But as we look at what this means for Ukraine, there is the broader question about what Russia does now, but it is also how do members, how do allies now respond? Does it change potentially the response in Ukraine to helping Ukraine?

WALSH: Yes. Look, I mean, I have to say, you know, the tragic and awful sacrifice it seems that Navalny has made in pursuing his position as an opposition figure in Russia, as Clarissa was saying, his capacity to influence change necessarily in Russia had been reduced. And so what today's awful news does is remind people here of a very clear and present threat of how utterly ruthless, if indeed, it turns out, in the fullness of time the Kremlin was behind this, as some European politicians are already intimating, quite the ruthlessness and the clear and immediate danger that Russia presents.

Now, that has sort of faded into the background to some degree here, with greater concerns after former President Trump's about NATO, whether or not the U.S. would stick with NATO in the event of Russian aggression, with the ongoing Israeli assault against Rafah in people's minds too. But now it is very clear to everybody here, every question that will be asked, and that will likely make its way into Kamala Harris' speech in the next 40 minutes or so, that they need to respond to the death of Navalny.

And this is frankly, to some degree, extraordinary, because Vladimir Putin had managed to isolate his key, most charismatic, most voluminous on social media opponent in that Arctic Circle prison, comments to his wife on Telegram about Valentine's Day, a court appearance that apparently was on the 15th of February, in which he appeared to mock the judge he was speaking to, and then, according to Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, his death on the morning of the 16th, out of the way to some degree.

And now here, he's thrust back into the limelight, as too is this ultimate question of the state of mind of Vladimir Putin, if indeed it is proven in the fullness of time he had any connection to the death of Navalny, as some already allege.

It's clear that Putin dislikes intensely any sense of opposition or threat in the past.

[07:20:00]

He has enabled his opponents to sort of be deprived of the oxygen publicity removed from the electoral process. But here we have clearly a Kremlin that, even through its lack of care of Navalny, preferred him dead than alive.

After the death and a suspicious plane crash of the former Putin confidant, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led so much of the frontline efforts with his Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, he died after leading that short-lived and perhaps deeply complex and misunderstood rebellion against Putin one weekend, and I can list endless previous opponents of Putin who have met confusing, sticky, suspicious, murderous ends, often with poisoning too. Remember, Navalny himself was poisoned as well.

So, we are dealing with a Kremlin head here who clearly has significant paranoia. And is that a reflection of how safe he feels in his position? And what does it mean for the Ukraine war going forwards? These things do not occur in isolation. Yes, Navalny's death is not going to change the front lines in Ukraine at all. Is it going to influence the decision-making of Republicans in Congress about getting through the $60 billion that Ukraine so urgently needs? Well, maybe, maybe not. They seem lost in their own whirlpool there. But it really is a reminder for everyone behind me here that Russia is the talking point. That was kind of the main thing with plenty of distractions around it, the risk that not being vociferated with the loudness that Moscow's critics was like, but it's going to be front and center now for the next two days.

JIMENEZ: And whether that shifts the posturing of the U.S. government, that's an entirely separate conversation, but it will be interesting to see how Vice President Kamala Harris frames that up when she speaks a little bit later this morning here on the East Coast.

Clarissa Ward, Nick Paton Walsh, David Sanger, thank you so much.

We're also getting reaction in real time from the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, saying it is for doctors to find out the cause of Alexey Navalny's death. And I'm quoting here, as far as we're aware, in accordance with all the rules, the prison services carrying out checks and clarifications. This does not require any particular order due to the existing set of rules used as guidance.

And I want to also say that this comes, as we're hearing from Navalny's spokesperson saying, that they are trying to confirm these reports that have spread up to this point.

HILL: Right. And I believe it was Nick who was telling us, or perhaps it was closer, that his attorney is on his way there.

And we should remember this prison where he was being held near the Arctic Circle is not easy to get to. And that was one of the concerns after he was moved there that it would be more difficult to communicate with him because it takes some time to get to that location.

As we continue to follow this breaking news, if you are just joining us, Russia's prison service saying that opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, has died in prison, the Biden administration also reacting.

Stay with us. We're going to bring you those updates on the other side of a quick break.

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[07:25:00]

HILL: Welcome back. If you're just joining us with the breaking news, Reuters now reporting, we've been following these remarks that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is making at this hour. Zelenskyy saying it is obvious Russia's Navalny was killed by Putin. Putin does not care who dies and seeks to maintain his position. Again, that translation coming to us from Reuters, but these are comments. You see President Zelensky speaking there, speaking at this moment.

We are also getting reaction from the White House. White House Correspondent Arlette Saenz joining us now. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan weighing in, Arlette. What else are we hearing in terms of the White House's reaction?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica, national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke moments ago in an interview on NPR saying that the U.S. was still working to confirm the reports of Navalny's death, but that this is a terrible tragedy.

I want to read you a bit of what Jake Sullivan exactly had to say. He said, quote, if it's confirmed, it is a terrible tragedy. And given the Russian government's long and sordid history of doing harm to its opponents, it raises real and obvious questions about what happened here. He added, but I will withhold further comments until we learn more. And we are actively seeking confirmation, as I know Mr. Navalvy's family is as well, and will determine from there what comes next. So, this is something we certainly should expect to hear from President Biden as well, probably in the forum, at the very least in a paper statement.

But it comes as the administration has had deep concerns about Navalny's imprisonment and President Biden has personally raised this issue with Vladimir Putin himself. He brought this up in the very first phone call he had with Putin when he took office calling for his immediate release. And then when the two leaders sat down in Geneva, Switzerland, back in 2021, the president told reporters that he made clear to Putin that there would be consequences if Navalny were to die in prison and said that the consequences of that would be devastating to Russia.

I want you to take a moment and take a listen to how exactly the president framed that back in 2021.

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REPORTER: What do you say would happen if opposition leader Alexey Navalny dies?

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I made it clear to him that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: So, one of the big questions going forward, if this is actually confirmed, is what those consequences would look like.

It's worth noting that the president made that statement in 2021, long before Russia had invaded Ukraine. So, perhaps there's a change in the thinking for how exactly these consequences would look like.

But this is something that the White House has been watching very closely. They've had concerns about it. They've repeatedly called for Navalny's immediate release from prison. Now, the question is what will happen next.

Now, we also anticipate seeing Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in Munich in about an hour. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also there. That is certainly expected to dominate conversations while they are meeting with world leaders today. But at this moment, the U.S. is still working to seek confirmation that Navalny has died in prison and what led to it.

HILL: Arlette Saenz at the White House, Arlette, I appreciate it. Thank you.

JIMENEZ: Now, we are also hearing from NATO's secretary general on this death. Take a listen.

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JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: I am deeply saddened and concerned about reports coming from Russia that Alexey Navalny is dead. All the facts has to be established and Russia has serious questions to answer.

Alexey Navalny has been a strong voice for freedom, for democracy for many years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: And joining us now is professor of international affairs at The New School, Nina Khrushcheva, and former CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty.

[07:30:02]

So, Nina, I want to start with you, because just last week, you wrote about the economic struggles facing.