David Herszenhorn — The Dissident: Alex Navalny- with Peter Baker & Susan Glasser

good evening everyone um welcome to politics and Pros I'm Brad Graham the co-owner of the bookstore along with my wife Lisa mustine and uh we have we have a great program for you this evening featuring David heren Horn uh and his new book about Russia's leading political prisoner and foremost opponent of Vladimir Putin Putin Alexi nalni David's experience covering Russia includes um four years from 2011 to 2015 as foreign correspondent uh for the New York Times based in uh in Moscow and shortly after that he um he joined Politico as Chief Brussels correspondent for Politico Europe where where he was able to continue reporting on Russia and and Ukraine in addition to the EU and transatlantic relations then a year and a half ago uh he jumped to The Washington Post to edit out of Brussels uh that paper's coverage of Russia Ukraine and uh Eastern Europe so he's been he's been following events in Russia uh for for for a while um in his book he he does a a great job not only recounting Nali naval's life and how he's evolved but also what he's like what what makes him what makes him tick and what he represents in in Russia today as part of that that generation uh that straddles the end of the Soviet Union and birth of the of the Russian Federation uh although that biography is titled uh the dissident David's quick to note at the start that Naval himself doesn't like that label because it hearkens back to a group of resistors in in Soviet days who who never won much um in nal's View and Nali sees himself in in grander more ambitious terms as um I'm sure you'll hear David uh talk more about in a minute instinctively political naal prefers to be known as a politician and the Undisputed leader of Russia's opposition someone who spoken out forcefully against tyranny and official corruption and he and he certainly is that having having in fact risked his his life in the process amid several assassination attempts the most famous being the effort to poison him in 20120 uh although these days uh nalni exercises his resistance from prison where he's been sentenced to serve nearly 30 years on various trumped up charges of fraud embezzlement and extremism and today in fact is the third anniversary of when nalni as you uh probably remember returned to Russia and was immediately arrested uh that was that was three years ago today uh as as cage courageous and defiant as nalni is portrayed in David's book He's also in David's balanced telling uh shown to be complicated and and paradoxical with a history of nativist and nationalistic Views that have made him at times problematic for for some in the west uh all in all the the dissident goes a very long way towards better understanding both both nval uh and the Russia that sadly remains far from naval's aspirational view of it as someday Democratic free and fair uh in discussion with David we also have a a special treat uh we have two other journalists who know Russia very well Peter Baker and Susan Glasser uh Peter is a chief White House correspondent for the New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC and Susan's a staff writer at the New Yorker and on global Affairs Analyst at at CNN basically they have the media blanketed um get together they spent a tour uh in in Moscow as co- Bureau Chiefs for the Washington Post in the early 2000s and out of that they co-authored a great book Kremlin Rising about the early years of Putin's rule in Russia they've also jointly written excellent biography of former master power broker James Baker and authoritative book uh the divider about Donald Trump's presidency so please join me in welcoming David Peter and [Applause] Susan all right wow what a great crowd tonight it's not cold out at all is it thank you guys for coming what a terrific group uh I have to say I couldn't be more delighted to be here tonight with David because David and I worked together for a number of years in the Washington Bureau of uh the New York Times and he cut his teeth on all the chaos and craziness he would cover overseas by covering the United States Congress which is probably pretty good preparation for uh for some of the things he's seen ever since but he's also not only one of the uh the best smartest and fairest journalist I know also one of the best colleagues I ever had uh we ever had in the bureau we still miss you David thank you very much he's also also more importantly the father of one of the hottest College journalists in in the country today who I think may be here someplace there we go you haven't ousted any University presence today have you miles not today okay miles hen Horn's here we're there grateful to have him here yay Miles great work at the uh at the Crimson these last few weeks so um Dave we want to talk about uh naali I suspect a lot of people here are Russia people but there may be some people here just just love a good book which is the great thing about P&P which is such a fabulous establishment BR thank you very much for including us we always love being here and you've done such a remarkable job of making this uh such a keeping this and preserving this as a pillar of the community so for those who may not know much about Alexi nval as famous and important as is tell us a little bit about more about who he is and why he decided to write a book about him now it is the third anniversary so the timing is great um sure well first you know great thanks to politics and pros and to you uh Peter and Susan U for for doing this um there were there were a few ulterior motives in in inviting uh Peter and Susan U not to to present the full mainstream media conspiracy but because you are um trenchant uh Russia Watchers and also I knew that if news broke and one of you had to bail the other one could step in um but also um for those of you who know a little bit about uh Peter he's chronicled now five American presidents and of course in uh all that time there's been one president of the Russian Federation uh which says a lot um so naali why naali why now well credit um uh to Shan Desmond my terrific editor at uh 12 um who proposed the idea Naval had been arrested he was already um back in Russia and had gone to jail and in fact there was no General interest book about naali he's such a public person um and this can present a challenge in writing about someone who is so open so public but has also very carefully crafted a certain image um and maybe that uh has folks shy away but um Tron and I have been looking for a book project to do together we're friends for a long time um every once in a while I'd come up with some wonky idea about politics or this or that and he said isn't there a Russian mobster you could write about and in the end um naali provided that kind of character I think that that fit what both of us were looking for in a project and the challenge there being that no one had had done this I mean this is a guy who he's very very public um but in fact there are many many things that folks even who have followed his career for a very long time didn't know about him the the main one um and the Washington Post U graciously did a nice um adaptation excerpt about this is he's half Ukrainian that his grandfather um his grandparents on um his father's side his father is born in Ukraine he spent childhood summers in Ukraine um so it was a lot of fun to tackle that to what could I learn even having covered him when I was in Russia what could I learn about this guy that I didn't know and there was quite a lot yeah well thank you uh for getting us started I I do think given that today is the third anniversary of you know this moment that I'm sure a lot of people uh here watched the terrific and I I did think it was a terrific documentary on naali which which won the Acy award last year but you know there's a sort of Frozen in Time aspect to this question of why did he get on the plane uh you know and and and it's not irrelevant it's not it seems to me it's it's it's actually at at the core of the book that you've written about naali is this this central question about what what does it mean to take on power in Putin's Russia without the reasonable expectation of uh electoral success or even the ability to actually compete when so many people Brad was kind to mention the book that Peter and I wrote about the first few years of the Putin presidency Kremlin Rising uh as you well know David many of the people who are characters in that book they are uh either dead or in Exile or in prison and uh in fact the main characters uh from start to finish in that book that's the fate of almost all of them navali knew this uh he was nearly died uh and you know was really only through a series of accidents that you recount very powerfully in the book uh that he was was saved from from Death uh in in poisoning and yet he chose to get on the plane what can you tell us about why he got on that plane and uh also why whether you think he will ever reemerge from the prisons that he's been uh sent to so there there were quite a lot of theories and this is the probably the main question what was he thinking how could he possibly he knew what was going to happen and in many ways in many ways he did um there are uh theories that it's hubris that he thought he was above this you know somebody who was recovering in the hospital in Berlin and got a visit from Angela Merkel the German chancellor who thought somehow he was going to be the exception and not end up um hard to believe right when in fact uh it's clear that Kremlin assassins tried to kill him um if you ask me my own guess it's that he's a fighter he can't back away from a fight and this has been true since he was a kid he gotten his share of of fist fights um Jen albatz who's one of naval's mentors a longtime Russian journalist U when I talked to her U for this book she said We're a nation of prisoners so I think there was an inevitability also in this that navali expected that at some point he would have to do this that there was no avoiding it um but it really is a remarkable thing when you consider it that he knew we have children the same age um you know the time that now three years that he's away from his family that level of of Bravery that commitment he's described it as as almost his fate that he's doing it so others so others don't have to um there's a Russian journalist television journalist ygi kof I don't know if you ever met ygi who was ended up being exiled essentially exiled forced out of Russia was living in Kiev and then when the big Invasion started had to leave Ukraine because Russians were no longer welcome in Ukraine I saw him not too long ago in in vilnus in Lithuania and kiss said you know navali is so brave and his bravery is absolutely senseless and you can understand why why somebody would have that view that in the end um you know he should have seen this coming but in fact you know as obvious as it was did we realize Putin was planning a war that he was ready to destroy a country of 40 50 million people so one man what does it matter yeah I did you I mean our version of navali in that sense was a guy named M kosi who was of course arrested he was a Russian oligarch arrested in 2003 he went he left the country 17 times between the time his partner was arrested and he was arrested with very clear signals from the Kremlin don't come back and he did anyway we have we have we've always asked the exact same question you know why go back when you knew and he may have had the excuse because he didn't imagine it could happen to him it feels like naali having seen it happen with him and with hosi and so many others kovski spent basically a decade in prison as a result had to have known I wonder if comes back to your thought about the cleansing or emboldening power of prison experience in Russia if he wants to be as you rightly say an opposition politician not a maybe a dissonant that he builds credibility for a future life and his view of running the country I guess is that I mean hodosi may have thought the same thing but of course didn't work for him right no there's definitely that aspect right that that belief that if he stayed out he would become irrelevant that his political career would be over that he would be this disident and worse a dissident in Exile and by going back he would sustain his political career the possibility that he could be elected president of Russia um someday another interesting aspect of this is Vladimir Putin's answer and he's been asked about this and he said in Geneva when he met with uh with Joe Biden was asked during the Q&A he said look he knew he knew he was going to be arrested he came back so what is there to talk about that was the answer now of course Vladimir Putin also doesn't even like to uh dignify naali by using his name uh and it's it's one of those remarkable things to see Putin's contortions when uh when even asked about navali you know when I read biographies I'm always fascinated uh by you know the sort of early parts of the book and what does it tell us uh presumably we picked up the book because we already knew something about the person or you know had a sense of their record in public life and you know you put your finger on one of the things that's most interesting in your biography about naani which is that he is part Ukrainian and that he spent some of his childhood Summers right outside of the what became the exclusion zone for Chernobyl how did how did that shape him I mean I I came away reading this that that Naval you know is from the last Soviet generation that he's still uh you know he's not as old as as Putin but that he was still profoundly shaped in many ways by his experience as a child in the Soviet Union uh with all the negatives that that entails including a belief in a sort of uh extr territorial Russia you know uh he's he's a Russian nationalist who like many Russian nationalists is not 100% ethnic Russian yeah no there's no question that for navalia now in the context of the war this is really difficult and many ukrainians despise him at this point and you know even in response to some of the um social media around this event people saying he's no better than Putin and um you know for navali ukrainians and Russians are the same people and that's sounds like something Vladimir Putin would say but for Nal it's because he looks in the mirror and that's actually what he sees his mother is Russian his father is Ukrainian and he thought of and thinks of Russia Ukraine and Belarus as brotherly countries not in a in a negative way but there is a Russian chauvinism there that ukrainians now forcefully disagree with and think is um leading to essentially the destruction of their of their country um but as you say Nalan came out of this generation that had a very very clear memories of the Soviet Union of standing online waiting for milk for his baby brother um of his parents going out and standing in these interminable cues for meat um you know the going back for um to return bottles for for deposit and the whole Ridiculousness of of the process um so there's no romantic view of of the Soviet Union um in nal's mind but it is a very specific generation that he talks about born from the mid-70s 76 like he was to 82 where they straddle the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Russian Federation and um yes I mean a transformation partly I think what drives Nali is the hopes for them were so dashed this is the generation that suddenly was able to travel the world that really saw saw Russia have a chance to become a free Democratic thriving country and suddenly it slips back into this authoritarian grip that then gets Tighter and Tighter and Tighter um so I think that also was a motivation for him knowing that that history well I mean knowing that history it brings us to the question that that that Brad raised in which you know he he he called himself a certified nationalist as Susan said he does not consider himself or at least didn't consider himself to be a distant didn't like that word and yet you use that title so why why use the title when he didn't want to use it himself what are you trying to say to us with that title because it's true um you know and and there is a danger and we've seen this um lately we don't need to go into details of of being too close to your subject and um you know in my case there was no getting close to naly in a in a prison Colony once this book project started um but in fact U and and this goes to the challenge of writing a in long form about a story that that is still very much unfolding um the book was supposed to be done to the printer finished uh last summer um as Nali was being sentenced in this latest trumped up case an additional 19 years that brought his total terms to to 30 years in prison and I had warned the the publisher and the editors that we had this one last sentencing coming due um and to be ready and okay that's that's the last thing we can get in what's the what's the final number and then a week later naali po has a long social media post um about how he's been Natan chansky's book and now describes himself sees himself in a book that's clearly written by someone who's widely acknowledged as a dissident say it's come for Circle he now accepts that title himself but um for for a long time not when you decided what the title of the book would be that's right maybe you convinced him although one of the other titles that I've always thought was you know an appropriate and very interesting title for navali uh since since we're talking about journalism uh is investigative journalist he is one of the very interesting examples I think of someone who has come to political activism and to leadership of a whole movement in Russia that was created around an essentially acts of investigative journalism as advocacy and activism and you know I he's a genius at uh at that he's a genius at political communication and he was really in in a culture that was you know pretty slow moving to adapt to new technologies right you know there was still very much the culture of uh essentially the main national television networks in Russia had remained a dominant source of news information and ultimately of propaganda inside the new Russia as it was in in the Soviet Union much Freer but still nonetheless really grounded in this this National conversation and then nalni is kind of this breakthrough figure of the New Media era who parlays this investigative crusading you know weaponizing information uh as politics so what about that I know he prefers and in recent years it's become more of a a kind of explicitly political leader but I'm really interested in what it means to be a journalist uh in in that context in Russia Today and what you think it tells us about um you know what was possible people would always say I'm sure they said this to you when you were in Moscow as well well Russia is not the Soviet Union because look uh there are all these reporters and you know look there is the possibility to report information navali is a very interesting example of of what Putin might have feared from freedom of the press there's there's a lot of tension there between navali and the Russian press in part because he and his team have a very negative view of Russian journalists I think some of us are are much more sympathetic to the obstacles that they face in an environment where media is largely State Control controlled state-owned and it it didn't start that way obviously after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a much Freer press and the restrictions came in um Tighter and Tighter um for Nali though it started out you know not really as journalism but as shareholder activism and very boring right this is a guy who's trained as a lawyer and in financial services and he kind of liked reading company prospectuses and looking for where the money was and I think as um social media especially the blogging platform live Journal turned regular citizens into journalists gave them a platform he really made the most of that and it was a remarkable transformation as you say where you know now they've made YouTube you know movies effectively right Putin's Palace is a movie viewed tens of millions of times um by way that's a really it's a good movie if you haven't seen it it's pretty pretty reveal it's very dramatic and and another thing to to keep in mind though is that um at the core of that is investigative journalism that was done by Russian journalists and by some American journalists including colleague of our Scott Shane um you know 10 years before it happened but then navali take and his team took that and turned it into this Blockbuster movie as if it was brand new with a mass audience focusing on this um this giant Palace that does or doesn't belong to Putin of course we know it it is for his for his benefit but there's no question that information and that type of activist journalism is at the core of what he's done um I would often hear from Russian journalists maybe you did too when I was in Moscow that you can't be in Putin's Russia you cannot be an objective journalist the way we aspire to be in the United States that if you believe in freedom of the press if you believe in democracy you're by definition also an opposition activist so it changes the definition of Journalism just right there well you mentioned the the palace I mean is that the reason then that Putin has it in for him I mean like is it's personal with Putin right it's not just I'm going to crack down on anybody who gets up and and and calls me you know the emperor with no clo he has a very personal visceral reaction to naali even though he doesn't use his name as Susan said yeah well the character that you mentioned the patient they have all sorts of euphemisms that they've used no there's no question that it did become personal over time and uh and Putin is you know is very sneering when it comes up this idea that this guy hasn't ever run anything hasn't you know proven himself as any kind of a kind of leader of course you know let him run let him have access to to media and and Nali complains about this that you know he would never get on the federal channels he would except when he was being described as a criminal um and in fact you know going back before um um before he was you know widely known naali had been part of a series of debates live debates in a format like this in uh that were held in Russian kind of clubs bars uh with a organized by a sort of a youth political movement called da yes and Masha gar who was uh the the daughter of the the former uh acting prime minister was a part of that and they had a an offer after doing these successful debates that became kind of a sensation among um you know in political circles in Moscow to do a TV show and novali was offered this job and they shut it down very quickly and he was convinced that the order came directly from um from the kremlin's sort of media minders that no this guy is not allowed to be on TV not allowed to because he knew how to use it um sometimes it was accidental though right his his sort of famous phrase that became you know I would describe as as sort of a first meme an early meme before we called memes memes about the the party of swindlers and and thieves or Crooks and thieves Julie K vov he said it in a in a radio interview sort of by accident you know describing Putin's party and he just has that kind of gift it's almost inate you saw it in that case where you know he just says this line and suddenly it's you know on bumper stickers and you know from vladas stok you know all the way in the Far East to Moscow so essentially he is the sort of the first great political Communicator of of the uh post Soviet era essentially it's really it's by the way it's hilarious to have I mean hilarious is not the right word to have Vladimir Putin saying nalni has never done anything and isn't qualified to be a leader because of you know Vladimir Putin was the The Man from Nowhere uh who no one had ever heard of including many of the people who he was placed in charge of the government of Russia and it's a reminder of the the sort of the weird vacuums the last year we've seen a lot of weird vacuums and I'm I'm wondering if you would just put your kind of Kremlin Watcher hat on and help us to understand that so you know we know the name of navali but largely because he's he's ended up as a more traditional dissident he's in prison that's how we knew the name of sharansky that's how we knew the name of Solan niten uh in the Soviet era what about actual politics does navali in your view still command a movement inside Russia Today what did all those people leave in the immediate aftermath of the Ukraine war are they uh you know hanging out in in Vilas and in Georgia and and turkey still or um is there a meaningful opposition inside Russia today um it's on life support there's no question about that um is there political opposition of course and and it's important to remember not just the the the names that end up really big like nalni I mean Vladimir carore is a um extremely dedicated uh sentence to 25 years in prison for treason when all the guy wants is democracy for his country an opinion writer for the Washington Post or Ilia Yashin who was a colleague in of of naal in the the yabla means Apple political party that navali first joined when he thought that Progressive Party was actually going to accomplish something and and then got very disillusioned by that so there are there are political opponents but of course Putin has squashed that opposition and in terms of Nali himself um it's hard to to draw comparisons but you might think of him as a as a Howard Dean or you know a someone who you know had a moment but is was never fully in step with the mainstream of his country and the Ukraine war has really um added to that it's hard to see how naali comes back in politics unless Russia not only is defeated categorically defeated in this war but the Russian Society accepts that it was wrong I mean he's come out now so forcefully despite ukrainians uh many ukrainians um really disliking him and thinking he's uh some sort of version of Putin he's come out so forcefully against this war in which thousands of Russians are dying being told by Vladimir Putin and uh his propagandist every day that it's worth something that this is important that this is an existential fight for survival that it's really hard to see how he can connect with that electorate in a way that would win him the presidency as he hopes I mean that's a really interesting question right because we don't know obviously without you know reordering all Russian Society so he could have free access to a free television and all of that but I mean he has run for office right but he just was never allowed to run in a real way never given attention but there is there's an argument to be made or at least I mean I don't know what your thoughts are you covered Russia more recently than we have that Putin even without the apparatus of repression is actually in touch with a significant if not majority of the Russian people and and might actually win a free and fair election had it come to it but he obviously can't afford to take that chance he would never allow it it's not his nature but that the Russian people you know are they given an option would they be looking for an alternative to Putin you would you would guess for those of us who cover politics that that folks are always looking for for something new for improvement right but I think one of the the key points about Putin that's deeply misunderstood in the west is is how deep his genuine support runs and that's partly because he's seen as having rescued the country from the disastrous 90s when the when Russia was actually literally starving um from the the sort of chaos of the yelton years and that of course lucky for Putin coincided with the Steep rise in oil prices with an economy that was booming but for folks who can remember the rush of those days default When people's bank accounts were you know savings would just vanish or the Soviet times when um you know for them Putin was you know and is a great leader who brought Russia back to you know made Russia Great again um you know now obviously we'll see how how much patience they have for this war and how um resilient the Russian economy proves to be um but um but there is that there is no question that Putin enjoys much more support um in Russia than he's often given credit for uh in in the west and it's not clear that even in a in a free and fair election that navali would would beat him um but of course we won't find out because he doesn't allow it right take that chance well and you know we've talked about uh navani as a Comm political Communicator as a as an aspiring elected official the theme that has run through all of his critiques of the Putin years has been about corruption uh and he not only branded Putin's party the party of crooks and Liars but he you know that that's been the the consistent focus and it's it's the reason that any everyday Russians who been turned off to politics in in any real sense they hate parties after 70 years of enforced membership in one party uh they are not very much into Grassroots activism around elections but you know this was something that even people who might have seen themselves as a political could get behind and he you know he had truck drivers he had people all across Russia at the height of his movement who were willing to sign on to his anti-corruption tell us a little bit I mean you know there's a sense that we've gotten much less information now from inside Russia of course than we did before the invasion of Ukraine but how much uh do we see corruption as as being something that you're allowed to talk about even in in Putin's Russia Today how much is it you know still an organizing principle for people to you know get behind uh the war is very likely as many wars have in the past to increase corruption in Russia right uh you know you're reorienting the economy to spend all this money on uh weapons you can only imagine that some of the Russian military's very poor performance against Ukraine uh a much smaller weaker less well supplied Force has got to be due to corruption this seems like a core naali issue it's it's a really interesting question and a complicated issue um the part of it has to do with the with how Russians view corruption in general and and many view it as as emic I'm not the the expert on corruption in my family my wife Christina who's a lawyer Works in compliance and ethics and and would teach U when we were in Moscow I was teaching um young Russian lawyers who wanted to uh earn American legal accreditation and would talk about this the the sort of presumption there was a saying that among Russians that you know Russia without corruption isn't Russia it's not actually faded to be that way and you know and she would ask CH are you corrupt you know no is your is your family your your wife husband corrupt no is it it's not actually destined to be that way and yet there's this fatalism about it and because of that the the anti-corruption message that navali had resonated with a lot of people but not so much that it was able to carry him to you know some popular movement and and he did expand that message quite broadly um when when he was uh when he was poisoned when he was nearly assassinated with a chemical weapon he was out in Siberia campaigning and one of the things they were focused on and they made videos about this was the dilapidated housing that was just falling apart I mean he's focused a lot on the crumbling infrastructure in Russia um one of the uh Buzz phrases that he added speaking of Nal as a Communicator was uh adding to his message of not just that Russia should be free but Russia should be happy you know you know pointing out that Russians are often just not happy folks I mean they're lovely folks many of them when you get to know them but as a nation fighting the tide of history on corruption and happiness happiness yeah it's a it's a tough fight no question we we're gonna in a few minutes we're going to open up to questions there's a microphone right here we'll let you know when to get up and start thinking about your questions um talk a little bit more though about you mentioned the ukrainians who don't like him who see him uh um as a as a dangerous figure I think I think there is a feeling in the west that he must be like us because he's against Putin right anybody who's against Putin therefore must be a western style Democrat small D but he's not exactly that talk about I mean he has made overtly racist and anti-immigrant uh comments he clearly does call himself a nationalist it doesn't mean he's a pro-western talk a little bit about what he represents and what the West should think of him in that regard sure I mean navali really is a born politician this is what the people who know him best say that you know he was born to do politics and in that way um you know some of his positions are as Craven as you might expect from um a politician I mean he is a Russian nationalist in the sense that he believes his country should be great um he uh definitely has um has you know some um retrograde views let's say on on Race on Central Asians uh you know has made some some quite ugly comments uh throughout the past some of it is humor sometimes it's it's sort of off-color humor he had a trip he took once to San Francisco that he was posting on live Journal various gay jokes I mean you know some of it that you know in in our current context you know certainly seems seems quite um offkey but um when you look at his position say on immigration an anti-immigrant position or proun position you know look at the United States Congress right you know I'd often point out um that the US Congress when I was covering it and now you know it has a proun anti-choice congress always no matter which party was in power um that's just the the political winds and nval certainly has tried over and over again to catch those those winds and see where it could take him so he went from being in what was viewed as the most Progressive uh liberal Progressive in our parliament's um political party yabla um to then flirting with hard-right nationalists attending the Russian March was a gathering of um of some really ugly um groups uh neo-nazis Etc and he was looking for an ideology that could somehow catch a majority of the country um and didn't find it and realized that it only got him a whole lot of grief um now he also tried to spin some of the anti-immigrant vi well I'm trying to you know they need labor protection so you know therefore they shouldn't shouldn't be allowed to to come to work in Russia Etc they're they're you know mistreated um that didn't pass the smell test um but a lot of these views were really aimed at ultimately trying to be where the Russian public was and is and that's where on Ukraine it's quite a challenge I mean he danced for a while trying to split the the balance on Crimea that you know the way Putin went about it seizing Crimea invading Crimea was of course illegal but yes Crimea is Russian and no it shouldn't you know it shouldn't no one should expect it to be returned it's not a baln sandwich was the the famous line um of course you can't have it both ways and since since then he's come out quite categorically against uh the invasion of Ukraine and the violation of Ukraine's borders but um that sort of waffling and flip-flop you know is is not unfamiliar to those of us who cover Washington what you mean but he he did he took this very instinctive let's go back because I think people might not be familiar with the you know the chronology here back in 2014 when Russia illegally Annex the Crimean Peninsula and you know the first such you know illegal annexation of territory like this really since you know the period after World War II navali didn't just waffle and he didn't just hedge he actually came out unequivocally and very strongly said absolutely this is Russian territory and that you know Soviet dictator kushav illegally gave it to Ukraine and that was actually even at the time you know a pretty astonishing statement given that Russia had you know multiple times you know by treaty and in law guaranteed uh Ukraine's post-soviet borders given that this uh alleged you know Malin had happened decades earlier uh you know it was it was a pretty shocking statement even at the time so shocking to us in the west shocking to to people who um put a lot of stock in in international law um but one way that I've tried to describe that time in Russia for Americans is you have to imagine that um by some accident of History America lost part of South Florida and not just certain part of South Florida but Orlando you know someplace everybody has been they've spent they have to S selling at this point right now that's not a good question to ask because people would probably vote to give it away childhood memories right and so if then a president had a chance to take it back to grab it back in the way that Putin did what would Americans say would they say violation of international law or would they say Disney nsh Disney is ours the way um Russians said Crimea is ours um and I got to tell you naval's position at that time was fully in step with the overwhelming majority of Russians I mean my you know um I don't know if it was miles or his his brother Isaac we were at a a kids birthday party uh paintball in Moscow in those days when the kids were running around shooting paintball shouting cream nsh Crimea is ours um the the guy who was in charge of the the paintball operation also wanted me and another American Dad to get in the in the mix so he could shoot Americans I think the proper analogy here is Alaska actually forget Florida isn't it that Russia would you know come and say well listen that was an illegal deal you know you guys you know you're your Seward he stole you know this for us come on he didn't pay enough money you know with 20 million bucks you know come on SO and that they would take it back so you know Russia has has quite a a tradition of um of Hooligans in sports like soccer hooligans and hockey Hooligans and colleague of ours Andrew Roth once described in this where a great detail a chant among hockey Hooligans who said Crimea is Russia Alaska is Russia everywhere is Russia except Kosovo Kosovo is Serbia well why don't we go ahead and have people come up and while people come up to ask their question tell us what we what we know about how his life is today in prison three years in prison not a fun thing in Russia not fun anywhere in prison but Russia especially and now he's been transferred way out into the far he tell us a little bit what we know about that and folks who have questions feel free to come on up to the microphone here please yeah so navali now is in the in the far far north um and uh somehow has maintained his good humor and his good spirits started uh posting and and of course he has folks doing this for him but he gets to meet with the lawyers and then pass messages and they then um post on X or elsewhere on his behalf saying I'm your new Santa Claus um and describing his life in The Frigid uh far north but we know he's been repeatedly thrown into isolation cells punishment cells brutal prison conditions his health has been poor um you know maybe even part of this mix he was accosted by Maria BH the uh the now propaganda journalist and member of the of the Duma but who was arrested uh here in the United States right for uh for not U registering as a lobbyist um and and boasted of her own credentials having spent time in an American prison and said he should be grateful for his conditions um no it's it's a it's a brutal um circumstance no question that he's been in um all the way through uh well I will um exercise the moderator's prerogative for one last question and then we can go ahead and just I would say uh so we can get as many questions as possible tell us your name make it a question uh with a question mark and uh you know we'll go from there but I on this question of navali in prison do you believe that Vladimir Putin will ever let him go it's hard to see that he ever would at this point nval is due to be released when he would be I think 75 um you know I think this is a question of of who dies first and um and that's a scary thought nal's life has been and is at risk while he remains in prison his team his family often points out that he is now in the clutches of a government that tried to kill him there's just no question about it uh you know independent investigations have proven that but whether it's by um you know German forensics or by uh Belling cat we know what happened uh there so it's it's really difficult to see how as long as Putin is in power that um navali um is ever set free on the other hand you point out about kovski and I was there this day after Putin's big annual press conference where in a small group of reporters uh talking off mic he just sort of casually announces that he's now pardoned hovsky and some of that is to show that um he toys with lives that he can do this on a whim and might it reach that point if he feels so confident if uh the war has gone in his favor perhaps but it's really hard to see that I guess I guess this is really just a request for some clarification over naval's position on Ukraine Visa Russia uh you mentioned that well one he's half Ukrainian um he's against the war in Ukraine but on the other hand he uh seemed to respect the the Russian claim that Crimea was part of Russia um can you imagine either for reasons of political expediency or anything else in the future that naal would agree that all of Ukraine is part quote part of Russia well it would be another flip-flop and a big one right at this point he's come out quite categorically against the war um he has spoken out in support of respect for Ukraine's internationally recognized Sovereign borders including Crimea um he's ducked around that by saying you know as defined in 1991 um but he's been very clear about that he's also called for compensation for Ukraine to be compensated for the war using uh revenue from Russia's oil and and gas um exports so it would be quite a switch um I don't think that that's possible I don't know that that um even you know how does he see it um historically tries to make the case that is Darkly it's been part that yeah the um you know certainly the ukrainians don't allow that I mean Alexander lukashenka doesn't allow that about belus either right so it's maybe Russians do or some Russians do you know I think they're there you know I don't believe that naani would ever go that far there are you know at most he splits the hair as you've heard about the crimea's Russian territory and we know I mean I have reporters you know right now out covering um the war in the east of Ukraine some of the reporting has to be done in Russia because folks speak Russian as their native language um there are a lot of divided loyalties it's a very Tangled complicated history but at this point Nali is quite on record um as saying this is a criminal war and Ukraine Russia needs to withdraw its forces immediately Ukraine needs to be compensated again that may put him in great Peril with the Russian electorate if if he's ever free and if he's ever running for anything um but that's his position at the moment thank you hi thanks very much for a great conversation uh my name is Doug Clan uh I wanted to ask um obviously Russia's opposition and Nal team they're in a very different place now than they were just a couple years ago when they thought they could bring about change in Russia through elections how do they think now about the future and their role in Russia in the future uh yeah well you know I think it's it's good to follow them and and hear what they're saying in his team you know nv's team is quite active uh still still you can find them on on social media putting out uh videos all the time um campaigning very strongly against uh the war but also pointing out where uh the West sometimes is falling down in terms of sanction sanctions enforcement and the like um there's no question they're now working in Exile that the change if there is going to be change brought about for Russia it's going to happen from the outside and so I think you're seeing you know historically we've seen this where you know governments you know or future governments start to form in Exile with a hope that political conditions then change and give them a chance uh to um put the country on a whole new trajectory thanks ladies first hi I'm Stephanie Olen um my question is if you didn't have any access as you said to noal directly how did you do your research for the book um well there's there's a ton I mean of um Nali is you know hugely public and is written extensively and posted on his blog extensively so there's a lot of navali in his own words um right up until the moment and he went to prison and even after he's continued to to tweet or and and post and write in in his name or folks are doing it for him but you can usually tell the trademark um navali language um so his own words were a huge part of that um there is a lot of documentation you know not a lot not in book form um there was one short biography of him written by by someone who's sort of a friend of his in early biography that was very very helpful um tons of news coverage going back in in U Russian but also in international press uh so um really it was a matter of just going back I mean there's too much material in fact you know this is a situation where you have more material than you could ever put into into any book and then um sort of peeling it apart but also talking to people who knew him well um who know him from you know his earliest days getting into politics um there's been tremendous work by by Russian journalists uh covering Nali over the years um so there was Ample Ample material thank you hi my name is Bob Carr my brother is a conservative who's forgotten he was anti-communist how did this happen yeah there there have been a few twists and turns in uh in politics uh you know the maybe the the authors of the divider have are better equipped to to answer that well I you know real quickly not because we have David's book here to talk about I think you're right that politics have flip-flopped in a way in America and it's very strange to see the Republican Party under the current uh front runner for the nomination um seemingly so friendly with with Moscow and that was the raise on Detra of the you know Goldwater Reagan uh Republican party but I think it's partly about ideology the the the Russians at that time under the Soviets were perceived to be you know were Communists and perceived therefore to be allly side of the the left Putin has made a very determined effort to position himself on the right as the defender of traditional civilization a defender of Orthodoxy is defined both as a religious thing as as well as a a secular thing anti-gay rights anti you know uh progress right and that has that has clearly won some converts here in America even aside from Trump's own hard to understand particular relationship with Russia among the the farri uh in the United States right now so it has kind of flip-flopped a little bit yeah I mean you know I I would say that it's true in particular Putin after he came back to the presidency remember that he faced you know and and and David was there for for this period of time he faced an enormous uh push back actually from what we might consider kind of the liberal uh intelligence in Moscow and St Petersburg tens of thousands of people in the streets the most serious threat to Putin's government since he came into power uh and in that famous New Year's Eve 1999 you know and so one of the responses from that was a much almost a makeover of Putin you know Allah Victor Orban uh as a as a Fox News approved culture Warrior and it was dating back to this period of time that you have the Donald Trumps and the Tucker Carlson's uh you know sort of starting to embrace Russia and to take what Putin said at face value uh you know that he was some sort of a fellow right-wing ideologue but then there's also I think a a deeper less prominent history on the American right that you know that goes back for for decades and really even a century or more which is you know an outright flirtation with authoritarianism and with strongman leaders in in Europe uh you know Donald Trump uh had I think some of this even before I always go back to there's a a particularly fascinating interview that Trump gave to Playboy mag magzine uh uh of all places uh you know at the very end of the Cold War and in this interview he criticized mial gorbachov the last Soviet leader for uh essentially failing to be strong enough uh and he actually had praise for the leaders of China at this time because of their Crackdown in sendan square and so I think if you're looking for the the kind of particular War sack test there of Donald Trump and of part of the American rate not all of it but part of it but the final thing is look at the opinion polls go back and look at the opinion polls uh of American views of Vladimir Putin by party from say 2015 to 2017 you will see an amazing thing you will see the numbers cross on the charts because Republicans what did they do they followed the leader the shift in Republican opinion about Putin was was really remarkable and and maybe I'll just tie this back to naali one thing as much as folks talk about um sort of Trump's favorable view of Putin the reverse is not as true as everybody thinks Putin is happy to use Trump for the instability that he can help create in the United States but in fact Putin views the entire American system as anti-russian and if you think back to the um the summit they had in Helsinki I was there in the end Putin wiped the floor with Trump in many ways but didn't get anything substantive out of it and here naali shares a view and nal's team of real um disappointment in the west and a view that the West has failed on Russia policy and there isn't this very benign view as much as um Nali has has you know um you know Embraces the liberalism the progressivism the freedom of the West there's really a belief that the West has failed on Russia policy and has appeased Putin for for too long and this idea that there's something wrong in the American Le system that has allowed Russia and Putin to persist in the way that it has there's one story that uh we actually had our our book about Putin and and Trump meeting which I I I you reminded of remind me of in Osaka Japan they were meeting on the sideline of a G20 and to your point about Putin not exactly you know reciprocating Trump's you know affection uh they're talking about uh Trump is doing his thing he's bragging right he says you know the polls love me so much they're going to name a fort after me Fort Trump and the Israelis love me so much they're naming a settlement after me uh Trump Heights and and and Putin who gets the joke basically says well maybe Donald D should just name all of Israel after you and it's this is clearly this moment this is this is in private described To Us by people in the room it's clearly this moment where he understands that Putin is I he understand that Trump is this narcissistic figure who simply love attention and and people uh giving him respect as he calls it uh and he was he was playing to that and he was mocking him even to his face I'm not even sure whether Trump necessarily got the joke right but well but to this this goes back to your book what about navali and is he a dissident or is he a politician to be a politician implies that there's a meaningful space for politics inside of Russia number one but number two to be a dissident is to revert to a period of time in which actually the um the good offices of the West uh were part of they were your uh your only hope of not spending the rest of your life in the gulag and uh I do think that it's it's interesting because this strand of you know criticism of the West and anti-westernism was part of naval's political movement in a way that it wasn't of the democratic reformer types uh who emerged into politics in Russia in the 1990s but now now that navali is a dissident uh you know it seems pretty clear that the difference between a Biden and a trump in the White House is the difference between a president of the United States who would even bother to mention at a summit uh you know this you know that was the same Summit that Peter's talking about at which Donald Trump was reported to have uh said admiringly to xiin Ping uh at um at the dinner correct uh that uh he was you know talking with him about his crackdowns inside of China right oh seconde Chris Carroll from Washington DC first of all all three of you great journalists thanks for all you do yeah absolutely David in your research of navali um just heading into a fraud election year what are some lessons that everyday Americans can take away from his experience thank you [Music] at at this point be careful about travel in Russia I guess is is one um no I mean the point I was going to add is that it it brings us back to this question of why did navali get on on that plane right and um you know this view in Russia of dissidents and the Soviet dissidents of having taken the easy path taken the Escape um when uh the West offered them a path a path out and then going back perhaps after the sov even collapse but not um but not having suffered not having really been willing to to have skin in the game or or in the prison Colony as the case may be um for a for a fraught election year I guess one um one important lesson I would urge uh Americans to take away is uh to be grateful you know for the for the system that really is durable um that has proven despite some some very difficult trials in recent years that um when I when I was leaving Russia um after my assignment with for the New York Times in 2015 some Russian friends and of course this is after um Crimea and the and the war in dbass was already underway and Russian friend say oh you're you're leaving because it's the political climate here is bad it's it's really getting worse and I said no actually the the New York Times wants me to go back to Washington because we have a presidential election next year and unlike here we don't know who's going to win there's work to do um and you know it's very easy to to take that for granted I think it's taken less for granted after after January 6th Etc but um there really is a you know there are reasons why people around the world Envy a system where you can get free Fair media coverage of candidates where um you know Barack Obama can rise to the presidency uh where there really is equal opportunity and equal protection under the law um you know those are things not to be taken for granted and n is a guy who is sitting in a prison colony and you know freezing in the far north essentially for simply demanding a free Democratic country for his children that's what he's been looking for you know it'd be great if you know politicians didn't steal but let's you know not be too cynical or jaded but politicians steal everywhere on earth right I mean what he's looking for is a core Society the idea that Russia could actually be free Democratic and happy that it's not it's not impossible that it's not faded we have so few events in Washington that end on an optimistic note but I love David's pay to American democracy let's end on that thank you very much David thank you guys for coming a great evening thank you so copies of uh copies of David's book are available at the checkout desk he'll be up here signing please form a line to the right of the table

Channel: Politics and Prose

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Keywords: books, book, politics and prose, bookstore, author, author talk, author video, book talk, new books, book store, indie bookstore, independent bookstore, book tube, booktube, reading vlog, annotating books, book annotations, reading vlogs, journalism, journalist, Washington DC, DC, bookworms, bookworm, book worm, book worms, book chat, @politicsprose

Id: PXKDFFTXkQA

Length: 58min 44sec (3524 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2024