In Navalny poisoning, rush to judgment threatens new Russia-NATO crisis

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

News

4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Claims that Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has been poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok are threatening a new standoff between Russia and NATO states, with calls for punitive measures against Moscow, including cancelling the Nordstream 2 German-Russia pipeline. Navalny's opposition activism is "marginal in Russian politics -- it's not currently a threat to the Kremlin," says Fred Weir, a veteran Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. "Navalny is little more than a nuisance [to the Kremlin]. And I can't believe that Putin would rocket him to the top of the world political agenda through a botched attempt to assassinate him, or even an effective one. It just does not make sense to me." Weir also discusses the flaws of Russia coverage in Western media, including the recent case where Russians were accused of staging a fake left-wing website to deceive U.S. audiences. Guest: Fred Weir, veteran Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Pushback. I'm Erin Mate. Joining me from Moscow is Fred Weir, veteran correspondent covering Russia for the Christian Science Monitor.
0:12.2	Fred, welcome to pushback.
0:14.7	Pleasure to be here.
0:16.7	The poisoning of Alexa Navalny, the German government says that they found Novachak in his system,
0:23.8	now a lot of pressure on the Russian government to come up with an explanation to investigate.
0:30.6	What are your thoughts on what we know so far?
0:33.0	Well, we don't know very much.
0:35.6	I mean, I think people should understand that Russia is a big, sprawling country.
0:41.7	It's got many, many intersecting elites, which Putin has managed fairly effectively
0:49.9	over the past 20 years, but he doesn't control everything.
0:55.4	And so when you have a character like Navalny, who is part of the extra parliamentary opposition,
1:03.9	he's kind of, he's kind of like, say, the Communist Party would be in the United States
1:09.7	or something like that.
1:12.9	He's definitely on the margins, but Russia being the type of opaque and certainly rigid, centralized
1:22.7	state that it is, the authorities consider him to be a threat, and he's a fairly talented politician.
1:32.7	He has got a lot of enemies. I mean, within the Russian elite, within Russia,
1:39.3	what happened to him is scary and horrifying, but it's kind of hard to see it having been
1:49.1	ordered by Putin.
1:52.6	First of all, I'm pretty sure that Russian Secret Services, and I'm posing this as a question,
1:57.8	not as a polemic, but Russian Secret Services, I think, I'm guessing, know how to kill efficiently
2:06.0	and without creating a really loud, scandalous trail leading to themselves.
2:13.6	And the use of anything by the name Novichok does plant a flag that says
	...

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