Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

Kremlin Critic Alexey Navalny Dies While Imprisoned in Russian Penal Colony; History of Alexey Navalny's Activism against Corruption and Russian President Vladimir Putin Examined; Russian Prison Service: Putin Critic, Alexey Navalny Dead at 47. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 16, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:00:39]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and thanks for joining us on this Friday. I'm Erica Hill with Omar Jimenez in New York. Poppy and Phil are off this morning.

We are following the breaking news out of Russia. Putin Alexey Navalny has died in prison. That is according to the country's prison service. Navalny was 47 years old. As for the cause of his death, that is a mystery at this hour. Navalny was serving a 19-year prison sentence at a penal colony near the Arctic Circle on charges of extremism. Navalny, of course, led a nationwide anti-Kremlin protest for more than a decade. He had run for office to challenge the Russian establishment, expose a lot of what was happening there, survived several poisonings. He spoke to our Christiane Amanpour in 2020.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Why do you want to go back? And I guess, do you think you'll be safe when you go back?

ALEXEY NAVALNY: Well, I don't think that I can have such a privilege being safe and Russia. But I have to go back because I don't want these groups of killer exist in Russia. I don't want Putin be ruling of Russia. I don't him being president. I don't want him being tsar of Russia because, well, he's killing people. He's the reason why the whole country is degradative. He is a reason why people are so poor. We have 25 million people living below the poverty line. And the whole degradation of system, unfortunately for me, including system of assassination of people, he's the reason of that. And I want to go back and try to change it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We have team coverage right now on this breaking news. I want to start with Clarissa Ward in London. Clarissa, just explain to our viewers, one, just the significance of these reports, but also the significance of the timing of these reports.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think this was a moment where everybody feels chills. It is something that a lot of people had braced themselves for the possibility of since Alexey Navalny was taken into custody when he returned to Russia after being poisoned with Novichok and surviving it in January of 2021. There was, of course, a great deal of concern from his supporters and his loved ones that his life would be at risk. We saw him really in the most difficult and depraved of conditions being held, having repeated health problems, complaining that he was being overprescribed with many different antibiotics, that he was having terrible stomach issues, that he was not getting adequate medical care.

And yet still, he was able to keep up this town of defiance. He was able to keep continuing to communicate with his supporters via social media. And while he didn't pose a direct threat to Vladimir Putin in any sense, because he was being held and everyone understood that he was not going to be released anytime in the short-term future, there was also, of course, broadly this expectation that it would be crazy for the Kremlin to do something like kill him potentially while he was in custody.

Now, of course, at this moment, we do not know exactly because of Alexey Navalny's death, but there will be a feeling, surely, around the world, and particularly from his supporters that he would not be dead if he had not been languishing in this penal colony, if he had not been getting such poor medical treatment for the number of different health issues and abuses that he was complaining about.

Let's take a look now though, at the real legacy of Alexey Navalny's extraordinary career.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blogger and lawyer turned opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner, Alexey Navalny was a menace for the Kremlin, who was not afraid to call President Putin out directly.

ALEXEY NAVALNY (through translator): Corruption is not just Putin, yet his is the base. He's a man who governs openly with the help of corruption.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Navalny rose to prominence in 2008, exposing corruption in state-owned corporations. Three years later, he emerged as the leader of mass protests in the country after allegations of fraud in parliamentary elections.

[08:05:08]

Navalny was arrested several times during his life, including in 2013, after being convicted of embezzlement charges just as he was preparing to run for mayor of Moscow. It was a campaign he would lose. Navalny denied all the charges and called them politically motivated. A retrial in 2017 prevented him from running for office, this time for president against Vladimir Putin. That same year, he was attacked with a green antiseptic fluid. It caused him damage in the vision of his right eye and temporarily died his skin green. One year later, Navalny told me what kept him going.

NAVALNY (through translator): The choice is very simple. You're either scared or you go on. I chose to go on a long time ago. I won't give up on my country. I won't give up on my civil rights.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He exercised those rights by calling on his millions of followers across social media to protest, putting him firmly in the Kremlin's crosshairs. In August 2020, on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny fell seriously ill. An emergency diversion by the plane's pilot appears to have saved his life.

Amid an international outcry, he was allowed to fly for treatment to Germany where it was discovered he'd been poisoned with Novichok, a chemical nerve agent. Later the CNN Bellingcat investigation revealed that for years Navalny had been trailed by FSB agents. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement.

But an assassination attempt and a medically induced coma didn't deter Navalny from taking his fight to a higher level. Whilst recovering in Germany, he conducted a sting operation against an FSB agent, convincing the operative detail in a phone call how the Novichok was used against him. That was then broadcast on his YouTube channel. Shortly after, he released a video offering Russians are look at what his team called Putin's palace, a mansion by the Black Sea estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. President Putin denied the palace belongs to him or his family members.

In January 2021, Navalny returned to Moscow after receiving lifesaving 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 a prison official's 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.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

WARD: And we're joined now by CNN contributors David Sanger and Jill Dougherty. David, I know that you're at the Munich Security Conference. Obviously, Navalny's death coming at a pivotal moment. And the U.S. says it sort of struggles with the issue of Ukraine and aid and former President Donald Trump's comments about NATO. What do you think the reaction, or how this changes the calculations, the conversations that are having at the security conference now in terms of how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin? Does this change the conversation at all?

DAVID E. SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It deepens it, Erica. On a human scale, obviously, this is a huge tragedy. Navalny was a man of huge courage. He took a joy in here his opposition role that I think was a bit infectious for most Russians. You were describing before the day that he revealed this palace that appears have belonged or closely linked to Putin. Other cases of corruption, these were all things Russians knew about their leadership, but couldn't believe somebody was able to go point out. He survived so many brushes with death, but mostly that poisoning attempt where his life was saved here in Germany after a plane made an emergency landing. U.S. officials, I don't think, had any sense of this was coming. I saw a good number of them this morning, and in our conversations about Russia, this never came up. But I'll tell you what did come up. This overall sense of a deepening confrontation with Moscow that was not supposed to be the way things would play out. The idea was that starting 30 years ago, more with the fall of a wall, Russia would slowly get integrated into Europe.

[08:10:06]

That seemed to be working until Vladimir Putin came to the building you see right behind me in 2007 and declared that there were parts of Russia that needed to be restored. He meant territories that had broken away after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we've been on a downhill run since. And I think this morning is just another sign of Putin's concern that he's got a head into elections that he'll certainly win with no cracks in his hold on power.

HILL: And to that point, Jill, I want to bring you in on this point. When we look at this and we're hearing a lot of reaction, obviously, coming out of Munich, but also from world leaders. E.U. President Ursula von der Leyen saying Putin fears nothing more than dissent from his own people. Jill, pick up on that point of paranoia, if you will, because I think, for most people, too, as we look at this, Alexey Navalny was in this remote penal colony. Yes, he could still communicate with the outside world, but the sense that he was still a real threat to Vladimir Putin in this moment, the paranoia that we've talked about this morning of Vladimir Putin, can just touch on that for us, Jill?

JILL DOUGHERTY, FORMER CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: Going back to 2017, 2019, 2021, when I was in Moscow and we would cover the protests, many of them organized by the Navalny team, and I would talk to these really --sometimes why are you here? Is this in support of Navalny? And many of them would say, well, it's not really Navalny. It's the country and my life. And the fact that we've got an old theater who is keeping us from having some type of a real life.

And I found that very intriguing. So for some people, it is, yes, they would love to see Navalny as the president of Russia. Obviously, that will not happen, and probably never would happen, obviously. But I think it's more the feeling that the Kremlin with an old leader -- Vladimir Putin is now over 70. He has a very old style of communicating. And Navalny was a new type of guy with really modern communication.

He mocked. He trolled. He was really good at engaging young person and talking the way a young person does -- ever ever answer that in their propaganda, they were not able to sound interesting and modern. And this has been a problem for Vladimir Putin. He tried, and I would look at these video meetings with young people and it was really almost embarrassing.

So I think there is human capital and moral capital that Navalny had that was more valuable, let's say, then probably polling numbers or something like that. He really touched a lot of brushes.

Now where we go with this, there's no question that on March 15, 16, 17, we're going to have an election, and Vladimir Putin, no doubt, unless there's an invasion by aliens, will be elected president of Russia, reelected. He could be there until he's 83 years old. Thats not -- it's expected, and that will happen.

However, what the people of Russia are thinking is very unclear, and we went back to Prigozhin. We talked a little bit about that. When Prigozhin rose against the military and against the Kremlin, he struck a chord, too, a populist note. And that is dangerous for the Kremlin because it's very unpredictable. They don't really, truly know what the Russian people are thinking.

JIMENEZ: Yes. Clarissa, I want to bring you back in because, look, this isn't happening in a vacuum here. And back in 2022, Navalny wrote an op-ed in "The Washington Post" where he said in part, in the context of the Ukrainian-Russian war, "While I commend European leaders for their ongoing success in supporting Ukraine, I urge them not to lose sight of the fundamental causes of war. The threat to peace and stability in Europe is aggressive the imperial authoritarianism endlessly inflicted by Russia upon itself." So, look, while we don't have the confirmed the exact cause or nature of death at this point, how does the symbolism of his reported death in a Russian prison further that described dynamic of aggressive imperial authoritarianism?

WARD: Well, I think for many people, they will feel that Alexey Navalny's death is also the deathblow for that small frame of opposition, of anti-corruption, of liberal thought that existed within Russia, that it has now been extinguished that the fig leaf, if you like, that the Kremlin had been holding up of having these elections has now been, essentially let go and whether this election, of course, it will take place next month.

[08:15:10]

But something has fundamentally changed with the death of Alexey Navalny, and I don't think as Jill says, we yet know exactly how that will impact the Russian people or what the response will be.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Clarissa Ward, Jill Dougherty, David Sanger, thank you all for your insight, for your expertise.

Stay with us. We're continuing to follow this breaking news obviously out of Russia where the Prison Service says top Putin critic, Alexey Navalny has died.

New reaction coming in every few seconds at this point. We are taking you live to the White House just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We're following breaking news: Putin critic, Alexey Navalny is dead at 47 years old. I want to take you to the White House right now where CNN's Arlette

Saenz is following some reaction we are getting just in from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

What is he saying?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Omar, the US officials are still working to confirm these reports that Alexey Navalny has died in prison, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken did speak to reporters in Munich about this just a short while ago talking about how Russia has been responsible in persecuting and poisoning Navalny in the past.

And he went on to say: "His death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of this system that Putin has built. Russia is responsible for this. We'll be talking to many other countries concerned about Alexey Navalny especially if these reports bear out to be true."

[08:20:16]

That is something that officials have continued to caution, that they are waiting for this confirmation. That is something National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan also pointed to this morning, in an interview with NPR, as he called it a terrible tragedy. Take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JAKE SULLIVAN, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: If it is 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. But withhold further comments on it until we learn more, and we are actively seeking confirmation, as I know, Mr. Navalny's family is as well, and we will determine from there what comes next.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SAENZ: Those final words, "what comes next" are the big question now facing the Biden administration.

President Biden had repeatedly called for the release of Alexey Navalny, including bringing it up in his very first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin when Biden took office back in 2021.

And then, the two leaders sat down face-to-face in June of 2021 for a conversation in Geneva, Switzerland, and the president said that, told reporters afterwards that he directly told Putin that there would be consequences if Navalny died while in prison. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What do you say what happened if opposition leader Alexey Navalny dies?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I made it clear to him that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, that was long before Russia had invaded Ukraine, so there are certainly other dynamics to consider in this situation as well.

Now, we're also expecting Vice President Kamala Harris to speak in about the next 15 to 20 minutes in Munich at the Munich Security Conference. So we will see whether she decides to weigh in on these reports on Navalny's deaths as well.

But this is certainly something the Biden administration is taking very seriously, has a lot of concerns about in is working to confirm at this moment if it is in fact true that he has died while in prison.

HILL; Yes, absolutely, and as we wait for those remarks from the vice president, it is certainly already impacting the conversations there in Munich.

I want to bring back Clarissa Ward, our chief international correspondent.

Clarissa, we are also now hearing as there is more reaction, we're hearing from Navalny's mother.

WARD: That's right.

So this is coming from "Novaya Gazeta," the Russian publication. They are quoting Navalny's mother responding to the news of his death, saying: "I don't want to hear any condolences. We saw him in prison on February 12th. He was alive, healthy and happy."

And I think that there really speaking, Erica, to this sense of disbelief that even though Navalny had had so many health problems, had complained bitterly about the appalling treatment and deprivation that he was facing in this penal colony, that he had been relatively healthy, you know, relative to the circumstances that he was being held in.

And so, this is coming as a huge shock even though on another level, it is of course, not surprising and will be confirming in some ways the worst fears of many of Navalny supporters, his loved ones. We have yet to hear any news from his wife, Yulia, or his two children, Dasha and Zahar.

We are now joined, though by Matthew Chance, who is our chief international global affairs correspondent, but also, of course, has lived and worked in Moscow for many, many years, and I'm wondering, Matthew, if you're hearing anything about the response of people in Russia to this news and what you would anticipate more broadly, the reaction being as people learn that Alexey Navalny has died?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, I think there's a shock, of course, Clarissa amongst people that I've spoken to over the course of the past couple of hours since this awful news broke about the reported death of Alexey Navalny. People are shocked from across the political spectrum really, that

I've spoken to inside Moscow. They knew that of course, Alexey Navalny has been for a long time, a target of the Kremlin. He's been poisoned, he's been imprisoned. He's been moved, you know, thousands of kilometers away from where his family are staying and from the capital for that distance work camp.

But I don't think anybody truly thought that he would be seriously killed or he would die whilst in custody. And so it has come as a shock to many of the Russians who I've spoken to.

You have to remember as well, Clarissa, that the death of Alexey Navalny if it is confirmed as it looks like it will be comes just a few weeks before the presidential election inside Russia.

[08:25:06]

It is not much of a competitive procedure, it's more of a sort of a sort of an opportunity to renew Vladimir Putin's presidency for a fifth time, but already, opposition figures in Russia and those in exile outside of Russia are suggesting that one way for this death to be protested against is for ordinary Russians to go into the polling booths when it comes to the middle of March and the election day, and to write Alexey Navalny's name on the ballot paper to show you know, their opposition to what is taking place in Russia right now, and specifically, this apparent death of Alexey Navalny.

WARD: All right, Matthew, and I think it'll be very interesting to see whether there is any sort of galvanizing moment here, whether we do see more protests to the extent that protests are still possible in Russia and obviously, we're keeping a very close eye, Erica on any and all reactions.

We are trying to get in touch with Alexey Navalny's family and of course, we will be updating you as soon as we hear and learn more.

HILL: Yes, absolutely interesting to see, too, if that write-in campaign works out, whether we would actually be told of those actual results.

Clarissa and Mathew, appreciate it, as always.

If you're just joining us, the breaking news this hour, Russian opposition leader, top Putin critic, Alexey Navalny has died in prison according to Russia's prison service.

Meantime, Vice President Kamala Harris set to speak at any moment in Munich at the security conference there. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: We continue to follow the breaking news, the Russian Prison Service reporting this morning, opposition leader, Alexey Navalny has died in prison.

[08:30:10]