Medvedev threatens Berlin, London and Washington with nuclear retaliation if Russia is to return to 1991 borders
Ukrainska Pravda – February 18, 2024
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation’s Security Council. Photo: TASS
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation’s Security Council, has threatened the United States and Europe with nuclear war if Russia is returned to its recognized borders from 1991.
Details: Medvedev wondered what would happen if Russia lost the war against “neo-Nazis along with their Western sponsors” and returned to its 1991 borders.
He speaks to this outcome as “the irreversible collapse of present-day Russia, which under the Constitution includes new territories”. Medvedev believes that after that, a “civil war with tens of millions of victims” and “the death of the future of Russia” will begin.
Quote: “And now for the main question: do these idiots truly believe that the Russian people will simply swallow such a consequential partitioning of their country? That we will all think:
‘Unfortunately, it happened. They won. Russia as we know it today no longer exists. It is unfortunate, of course, but we must continue to live in a country that is collapsing and dying, because a nuclear war is far worse for us than the death of our loved ones, children, Russia…’?
And that the state’s leadership, led by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, would be hesitant to make difficult decisions in this case?
Hear me out. It will be totally different. The collapse of Russia will have far worse consequences than the outcome of a conventional, even long-term war. Because attempting to return Russia to its 1991 borders will only lead to one outcome. To a global war with Western countries, utilising our entire strategic arsenal. In Kyiv, Berlin, London, and Washington. For all other beautiful historical sites, which have long been included in our nuclear triad’s attack goals.
Will we have enough guts for this if a thousand-year-old country, our great homeland, is on the verge of extinction, and the sacrifices made by the Russian people over the centuries are in vain?
Cheney urges Johnson to act: Don’t do what Trump and Putin want you to do
Kelly Garrity – February 18, 2024
Andy Kropa/Invision/AP
Former Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to call the House back from its recess and introduce the bill that would send desperately needed aid to Ukraine — even if it means risking his speakership.
“He ought to understand that it is worth it if he has to lose his speakership in order to make sure that freedom survives, in order to make sure that the United States of America continues to play its leadership role in the world,” the Wyoming Republican said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The Senate last week advanced a $95 billion aid package that included roughly $60 billion in aid for Ukraine as it works to fend off Russia’s invasion, a cause Republicans once broadly backed.
But Johnson, who has a razor-thin majority in the House, has been critical of the bill in the face of pressure from former President Donald Trump, and resisted taking it up before he adjourned the House for a two-week recess. “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” he said.
Cheney, who was ousted from her position in the GOP House leadership after refusing to waver in her criticism of Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection, urged Johnson not to give in to outside pressure.
“He’s going to have to explain to future generations to his kids, to his grandkids whether or not he did what was right, whether or not he was a force for good and aided the cause of freedom, or whether he continued down this path of cowardice and doing what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin wanted him to do,” Cheney told host Jake Tapper, tying their rhetoric together through the death of Putin foe Alexei Navalny.
“When you think about Donald Trump, for example, pledging retribution,” she said, “what Vladimir Putin did to Navalny is what retribution looks like in a country where the leader is not subject to the rule of law, and I think that we have to take Donald Trump very seriously.”
Cheney warns of a ‘Putin wing of the Republican party’
Sarah Fortinsky – February 18, 2024
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), an outspoken critic of former President Trump’s, warned of the emergence of a “Putin wing” of the Republican party and stressed the importance of preventing its return to the White House.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Cheney sharply criticized Trump’s recent comments suggesting he would not defend NATO allies in the wake of an attack from Russia and his recent silence following the death of the anti-corruption, pro-democracy opposition leader in Russia, Alexei Navalny.
“I think that we have to take Donald Trump very seriously,” Cheney said on Sunday. “We have to take seriously the extent to which you have now got a Putin wing of the Republican Party.”
“I believe the issue this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House,” she continued.
In the interview, she did not make any presidential endorsements and said she has not yet decided whether she would enter the race herself. She made clear, however, that she would do whatever she could to prevent Trump’s return to the White House.
“Donald Trump, as you pointed out, said just a few days ago that he had told a NATO ally that he would encourage Putin to do whatever he needed to do, whatever he wanted to do,” Cheney told CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
“He’s basically made clear that, under a Trump administration, the United States is unlikely to keep its NATO commitments. And I think that Republicans who understand the importance of the national security situation who continue to support him are similarly going to be held to account,” she said.
Pressed later about Trump’s NATO comments, Cheney said, “It’s disgraceful. I can’t imagine any other American president of either party since the establishment of NATO saying such a thing. And it’s completely uninformed and ignorant and dangerous.”
Cheney also drew a connection between Trump’s frequent suggestions that he would investigate his political opponents in a second term and Navalny’s death.
“When you think about Donald Trump, for example, pledging retribution – what Vladimir Putin did to Navalny is what retribution looks like in a country where the leader is not subject to the rule of law,” Cheney said.
Presidential greatness is rarely fixed in stone – changing attitudes on racial injustice and leadership qualities lead to dramatic shifts
George R. Goethals, University of Richmond – February 18, 2024
A statue of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, sits in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Historians consistently have given Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, their highest rating because of his leadership during the Civil War. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Every American president has landed in the history books. And historians’ assessments of their performance have been generally consistent over time. But some presidents’ rankings have changed as the nation – and historians themselves – reassessed the country’s values and priorities.
At the other end of the ranking, Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Warren Harding were labeled “failure.”
There have been numerous surveys ranking presidents since then, including a 1962 survey by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., which showed Jackson dropping into a “near great” category.
Changing views shift rankings
While the surveys point to Americans’ evolving social attitudes, with implications for our electoral politics and governance, they don’t always ask historians the same questions. Some simply ask them to rank presidents. Others ask them to also judge specific aspects of leadership, such as economic policy or international diplomacy.
Despite the relative stability of the ratings across surveys – especially at the top, where Lincoln, Washington and Roosevelt consistently hold sway – there have been some dramatic changes. C-SPAN’s four surveys on presidential leadership, for example, show some shifts in historians’ ranking of presidents over time.
Since 2000, the cable network has polled prominent historians every time there has been a change in administrations. So, C-SPAN conducted surveys in 2009, 2017 and 2021 as well.
The surveys offer not only an overall ranking of presidents, but also rankings in each of the following 10 categories: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision and agenda setting, pursuance of equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times.
While Lincoln has ranked at the top of each survey, the two presidents who served right before him – Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, both sympathetic to slavery – and his immediate successor, white supremacist Andrew Johnson, have consistently ranked at the bottom. Donald Trump debuted in C-SPAN’s 2021 survey near the bottom. He was ranked 41st of 45 presidents.
Andrew Johnson was Abraham Lincoln’s vice president and successor. As president, he vetoed legislation designed to help African Americans during Reconstruction. The Print Collector/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images
What is a good leader?
As a social psychologist and leadership scholar at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies, with long-standing interests in presidential leadership, I believe these surveys can be best understood in terms of psychologist Dean Keith Simonton’s model of evaluating presidents.
He maintains that historians generally view leaders, including presidents, positively to the extent that they fit a deeply ingrained image of someone who is strong, active and good. And that image comes to mind when they think of attributes and events linked to a president that suggest he was a good leader. Examples include how long he served, whether he was a war hero and whether he was assassinated, and in that sense, was a martyr.
On the other hand, historians also easily recall scandals, such as Richard Nixon’s Watergate and Harding’s Teapot Dome. These detract from these presidents’ “good” image, as evidenced by Nixon’s and Harding’s rankings of 31st and 37th, respectively, in C-SPAN’s 2021 survey.
Race matters
In recent years, presidents’ positions on race and racism have been important factors in historians’ evaluations of their records. For example, Wilson’s rather startling efforts to segregate federal offices and the military are becoming more widely known as scholars explore that aspect of his presidency.
His actions in that regard may overshadow his international idealism, which favored morality over materialism and has been viewed positively. He is no longer considered one of our “great” presidents. In Schlesinger Sr.’s 1948 survey, he ranked fourth of 29 presidents. But in 2021, historians ranked him 13th of 45 for C-SPAN.
Jackson dropped the most in C-SPAN’s surveys, from 13th in 2000 to 22nd in 2021. His commitment to Indian removal from Southern and Midwestern states, not unique for the time, and the resulting Trail of Tears – the forced and violent relocation of Native Americans from their homelands – are important topics in today’s political discussions.
President Grover Cleveland, in office from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897, opposed efforts to integrate schools or give African Americans, whom he considered inferior to white people, voting rights. Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Several other presidents who lost ground, including James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland, were associated with efforts to extend slavery or with failure to protect African Americans following Reconstruction.
Then there is the case of Grant. Ranked at the bottom as a failure in the mid-20th century, he had the largest ranking change of any president in the C-SPAN surveys. He jumped 13 places from 33rd in 2000 to 20th in 2021. He had already moved up from second-to-last place in the 1948 and 1962 Schlesinger surveys to somewhere in the bottom quartile in 2000, to a position in 2021 where more presidents ranked worse than he did.
The 2021 C-SPAN survey ranks Grant sixth on “pursued equal justice for all,” behind only Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter. Given the centrality of equal justice, which may overshadow whatever connection Grant may have had to scandals in his administration, such as Crédit Mobilier and the Whiskey Ring, Grant rises in historians’ overall evaluation.
Moral authority
This all suggests historians have quite simple ways of evaluating presidents. We have an image of the ideal leader. Just a few pieces of information relating to that ideal make a big difference in whether we view presidents as fitting or not fitting that image. This is particularly true of our perception of how good they were. Presidents’ moral commitments speak loudly to whether or not we view them as good.
Interestingly, on the quality of “moral authority” in the C-SPAN surveys from 2000 to 2021, Grant’s ranking rose 14 rungs, from 31st to 17th, even more than it did on “pursued equal justice for all,” where it rose 12 rungs, from 18th to sixth. Wilson and Jackson dropped 13 and 18 places, respectively, on “moral authority.”
Clearly, moral judgments loom large in historians’ assessments of presidential leadership.
Ulysses S. Grant, once ranked poorly by historians, now gets high marks. His advocacy for African American voting rights stands out among his efforts for the freedmen during Reconstruction. Print Collector/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
New presidential rankings place Obama in top 10, Reagan and Trump below Biden
Michael Lee – February 18, 2024
New presidential rankings place Obama in top 10, Reagan and Trump below Biden
A new ranking of presidents by a group of self-styled experts determined that Abraham Lincoln is America’s greatest president, while Donald Trump ranks last.
Lincoln topped the list of presidents in the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project expert survey for the third time, following his top spot in the rankings in the 2015 and 2018 versions of the survey.
According to a release from the Presidential Greatness Project, which touts itself as the “foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics,” the 154 respondents to the survey included “current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association…as well as scholars who have recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses.”
Former Presidents Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, and President Biden
The respondents were asked to rank presidents on a scale of 0-100, with 0 being a failure, 50 being average and 100 being great. Rounding out the top five in the rankings were Franklin Delano Roosevelt at number two, George Washington at three, Theodore Roosevelt at four, and Thomas Jefferson at five.
Trump was ranked in last place in the survey, being ranked worse than James Buchanan at 44, Andrew Johnson at 43, Franklin Peirce at 42, and William Henry Harrison at 41.
Respondents were also tracked by their political affiliation and ideology, which the release argues did not “tend to make a major difference overall” in the rankings, though there were some outliers, mainly with recent presidents.
Abraham Lincoln topped the list of presidents once again.
Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump were more likely to be ranked higher by conservatives or Republicans, with Reagan being ranked an average of 5th by Republicans respondents, Bush 19th and Trump 41st. Among Democrat respondents, Reagan was rated an average of 18th, Bush 33rd and Trump 45th.
A similar partisan divide was noticeable for Barack Obama and President Biden, who ranked an average of 6th and 13th, respectively, among Democrat respondents, and 15th and 30th by Republicans. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was ranked higher by Republican respondents (10th) than he was by Democrats (12th).
President Obama
The divide resulted in an overall ranking of 7th for Obama, 12th for Clinton, 14th for Biden, 16th for Reagan and 32nd for Bush.
Tucker Carlson’s Lesson in the Perils of Giving Airtime to an Autocrat
Jim Rutenberg and Michael M. Grynbaum – February 17, 2024
In this photo released by Sputnik news agency on Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, gestures as he speaks during an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Tucker Carlson left Moscow more than a week ago, riding high from an interview with President Vladimir Putin of Russia that returned him to the spotlight after his abrupt cancellation by Fox News last spring.
But the interview with the wartime autocrat, mocked in various corners of the political media world for its soft touch, continues to have a long and tortured afterlife — becoming a trending topic all over again Friday after Putin’s most vocal domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, turned up dead in a Russian prison.
“This is what Putin’s Russia is, @TuckerCarlson,” Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, wrote on X after the news of Navalny’s death broke Friday. “And you are Putin’s useful idiot.”
Naomi Biden, President Joe Biden’s granddaughter, also weighed in, pointing to a video that Carlson had recently posted in which he contrasted the supposed splendors of Russia under Putin’s leadership with the “filth and crime” of the United States. “Has anything aged so poorly, so quickly before?” Naomi Biden wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
In a statement to The New York Times on Friday, Carlson said: “It’s horrifying what happened to Navalny. The whole thing is barbaric and awful. No decent person would defend it.”
The comment represented a notable change in tone from earlier this week, when he appeared to offer a blase opinion regarding Russia’s treatment of Navalny, who was first imprisoned three years ago on charges of corruption and “extremism” that the United States called baseless.
Asked at a conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Monday why he had not questioned Putin about Russia’s free speech crackdown, Navalny’s jailing or suspected political assassinations, Carlson said those were “the things that every other American media outlet talks about.” (Carlson was, in fact, the first Western media figure to interview Putin in more than two years.)
But, Carlson said then, “leadership requires killing people — sorry, that’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader” — comments that came under still more criticism after Navalny’s death.
Carlson said in a statement Friday that his remarks about leadership “had zero” to do with Navalny. “I wasn’t referring to him, which is obvious in context. I’m totally opposed to killing.”
Although Carlson did press Putin during the interview on Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, he sat silent for long stretches as Putin conducted a history lecture that provided a one-sided and often false narrative about Ukraine.
Carlson’s fans and supporters on X portrayed criticism of his interview as sour grapes from mainstream journalists who did not get to interview Putin themselves.
But on Wednesday, a new pundit joined the chorus of those who said Carlson had gone too easily on Putin — Putin himself.
Speaking with a state television host, Putin said he was disappointed that Carlson had not asked “so-called sharp questions” because he wanted the opportunity to “respond sharply” in his own answers.
“He turned out to be patient and listened to my lengthy dialogues, especially those related to history, and didn’t give me reason to do what I was ready for,” Putin said. “So, frankly, I didn’t get complete satisfaction from this interview.”
Justin Wells, one of Carlson’s top producers, responded Friday that viewers should “judge for themselves.”
Putin’s mockery of Carlson came as the former Fox host was basking in the aftermath of his interview by offering a steady stream of praise for Russia and Putin, whose leadership he has extolled as superior to Biden’s.
On Wednesday, Carlson posted a short video recorded at a Russian grocery store, saying its selection and prices offered an example of Russia’s superiority over the United States, which he described as rife with “filth and crime and inflation.”
“Coming to a Russian grocery store, the heart of evil, and seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders,” he said in the video. “That’s how I feel, anyway — radicalized.”
The video drew a bipartisan rebuke: from Naomi Biden and, before her, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.
As a polemicist who has long dabbled in pro-Russia narratives and now relies on subscriptions from those drawn to just such content, Carlson operates in a sphere where the criticism he has received this week could be a catalyst for still more support.
“He’s just measured by an entirely different yardstick,” said Nicole Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University who studies conservative media. “Tucker under attack is great for Tucker.”
The last images of Alexei Navalny alive show him behind bars. He is a bit gaunt. His hair is shorter,missing its old sheen. Yet his eyes are the same as ever: They light up. In the video shot on Thursday, he jokes with a judge and a policeman. I’m running out of money, he says, a well-compensated judge should lend me some. His captors laugh. For a prisoner stuck in a camp above the Arctic Circle, he looks good — a strong man in whom you see the faintest of glimmers of optimism about his own and Russia’s future.
The other image that I dwelled on Friday shows Navalny and Boris Nemtsov. These two were the most prominent leaders of an inspired protest movement in the spring of 2012 that imagined a different kind of future for Russia. Borya is whispering impishly in Navalny’s ear, making him laugh. Both are handsome, tall, vigorous. The kind of men who turn heads.
Nemtsov was gunned down in February of 2015, at the foot of the Kremlin, a year into Vladimir Putin’s initial military assault on Ukraine. He was a youthful 55. Navalny died — no, let’s be honest here, was killed — on Friday, barely a week shy of the two-year anniversary of Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was 47.
They say authoritarians who survive have a talent for identifying and eliminating the greatest threats to themselves. To paraphrase Kremlin chump Tucker Carlson, Putin is a very talented man. He chose his prey well. In his time, Nemtsov was seen as a credible alternative — a reforming governor from Nizhny Novgorod who came to Moscow under the previous Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin. The taint of the chaos of the 1990s stuck to him; he was associated with the pain of the changes that had to be made and others that were avoided by Yeltsin, and that hindered him in the early 2000s. But Borya had different talents — a feel for people and retail politics and convictions — that Putin lacks.
By 2012, Navalny emerged as the most captivating face of the Russian opposition. He had dabbled in nationalist politics. Then he figured out he could use the Internet for well-documented crusades against corruption that made his name. He coined the phrase “crooks and thieves” to describe Putin and his coterie, and it stuck. It did feel like an opening, if ever so slight, existed in 2012. The regime was disliked, was wobbling. Nemtsov and Navalny had the middle classes of Moscow and St. Petersburg on their side. The political threat from them was direct. Especially for the last decade from Navalny. He knew how to use the media, he showed how to stand up to the regime with courage, and he was willing to make the sacrifices to one day try to lead Russia on another path.
Yet these men challenged Putin in other ways he must have keenly felt. There was the youthfulness and energy. Nemtsov was born seven years after Putin but acted and looked as if he came from another generation; Navalny was the next generation. They had a sense of humor and color to their faces. They were optimistic. They didn’t seem cynical. They had nice hair, too, atop imposing frames. Did that hurt the balding Putin’s ego — so sensitive that, as the joke that happened to be a fact went, he found the one man in Dmitry Medvedev who’s shorter than himself to stand in as president in 2008-12 when Putin was term-limited out of that office.
I note Nemtsov and Navalny’s evident masculinity since that trait is so important to Putin and his admirers abroad. No one besides his dog, the saying goes, knows what Putin really thinks. But you can imagine these men must have stirred more than Machiavellian insecurities in Putin. No pictures of the bare-chested Vlad on horseback comes close to the magnetism of the image I was looking at Friday.
Equally stark is the generational contrast. Putin and his people are old and look it. Dull and gray, they fit right in a group picture of the Soviet politburo circa 1982. You can note the same dynamic in play with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the 46-year-old president of Ukraine. He and his people, almost all in their forties or younger, came of age after the USSR collapsed. They look ahead. The boomer Putin mourns its passing.
I last saw Nemtsov in June of 2013 in Washington. Sitting on a panel next to me, he kept whispering in my ear. A quick joke. Once a compliment. He was warm, playful. His people were and remain immensely loyal to him. Including the writer and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has survived two poisoning attempts and currently sits in a Russian penal colony, another of Putin’s political prisoners.
I got to know Navalny better in March of 2012. Protesters were in the streets. The coming presidential election was a sham. He promised defiance. “The Kremlin should understand these tens of thousands of people will never leave the streets,” he told me. “We will never consider Putin as a president with legitimacy.” More than the words, Navalny left a physical impression on you. He had presence and a relaxed kind of intensity. Then 35, he usuallywore jeans and an open shirt.
On election night, I went to an event thrown by the opposition and remember standing with Navalny and Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster and opposition leader. Navalny’s confidence from a few days before had dimmed. He and Kasparov saw the staged election was a victory for Putin; the regime would counter-strike with force. They were right. Kasparov left Russia for good the next year. Navalny was charged with bogus embezzlement charges in July, the first of many that kept him in and out of prison over the next 12 years — except for the long spell in a hospital following a nearly fatal poisoning attempt courtesy of the Russian secret services.
In another country, Borya and Alyosha — the diminutives by which they were known to many — might have had their happy endings. They were the dashing princes, Putin the toad. But this story takes place in the land of the Tsars. Here the Tsar murders at will. His people are numbed to it — some bravely laid flowers Friday night at an impromptu memorial in Moscow, but we know too how this will end. Alyosha will be a memory, as is Borya. How will it end for Putin? The recent leader he resembles most, Stalin, died angry, ashen-faced and ailing, but in his own bed. It took over thirty years for any glimmers of optimism to emerge in Russia, in the 1980s with Gorbachev’s glasnost, openness, and the experiment with democracy in the 1990s, to be snuffed out with Putin’s ascendance in 2000. That’s not a happy thought. There aren’t any about Russia these days.
Navalny’s Team Demands His Body Be Returned to His Family
Kate Briquelet – February 17, 2024
GONZALO FUENTES
The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny—who his spokesperson claims was “murdered” Friday at the Arctic penal colony where he spent his final months—won’t be released to his family until officials complete an investigation.
Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, endured the bone-chilling cold Saturday to visit the prison where he collapsed and died, Reuters reported. Authorities told her the 47-year-old Kremlin critic’s cause of death was “sudden death syndrome.”
“It’s obvious that the killers want to cover their tracks and are therefore not handing over Alexei’s body,” Navalny’s team said in a Telegram post, “hiding it even from his mother.”
Following the news of Navalny’s death, Russian police arrested at least 340 people at protests and memorials in 30 cities on Saturday, according to rights group OVD-Info.
President Joe Biden and other world leaders swiftly blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the death of Navalny, who was his most prominent foe. “The answer is, we don’t know exactly what happened,” Biden said on Friday, “but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Navalny’s demise comes a month before Russia’s presidential election, which will keep Putin in office for another six-year term.
Alexey’s lawyer and his mother have arrived at the Salekhard morgue. It’s closed, however, the colony has assured them it’s working and Navalny’s body is there. The lawyer called the phone number which was on the door. He was told he was the seventh caller today. Alexey’s body is not in the morgue.
On Saturday, Navalny’s spokesperson shared updates on Russian officials’ purported probe.
“Another of Navalny’s lawyers,” Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter/X, “who went to Salekhard’s Investigative Committee, was told that ‘the cause of Alexey’s death has not yet been established, a new histological examination has been carried out.’ The results will supposedly be available next week. It’s obvious that they are lying and doing everything they can to avoid handing over the body.”
“Now the Investigation Committee says directly that Alexey’s body will not be handed over to his relatives until the investigation is complete,” she added.
“Only an hour ago, the lawyers were informed that the investigation had been concluded and that something criminal had not been established. They literally lie every time, driving us around in circles and covering their tracks.”
According to the Moscow Times, the country’s federal penitentiary service said Navalny had “felt bad after a walk,” lost consciousness, and died.
But one of Navalny’s lawyers, Leonid Solovyov, said the anti-corruption activist appeared “normal” when another attorney saw him on Wednesday. The next day, Navalny was pictured smiling and cracking jokes during a virtual court appearance from the prison colony.
Navalny became a household name and Putin’s most outspoken critic through publishing exposés on corruption and leading massive anti-Kremlin protests.
In August 2020, he survived a poisoning with a deadly nerve agent, falling ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow and soon being transported to Germany for treatment. Beforehand, he’d reportedly been followed by two doctors and six agents with the Russian Security Service.
Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021 and was immediately arrested. He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years behind bars for an alleged probation violation.
The following year, Navalny received another nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court; his supporters decried these charges as fabricated. He was sentenced to another 19 years in prison in 2023 after a court convicted him of extremism.
On Friday, the dissident’s wife Yulia Navalnaya told a crowd at a conference in Germany she didn’t know whether to believe her husband had died.
“But if it is true, I want Putin, those around him, Putin’s friends, and his government to know they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, my family, and my husband—and that day will come very soon,” she said.
Last year, a documentary about Navalny’s poisoning and imprisonment won an Academy Award, and his wife and children attended the Oscars to accept it.
“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth, my husband is in prison just for defending democracy. Alexei, I am dreaming about the day you will be free, and our country will be free,” his wife said on stage. “Stay strong, my love.”
What Alexey Navalny wanted people to know “if they decide to kill me”
Tucker Reals – February 17, 2024
What Alexey Navalny wanted people to know “if they decide to kill me”
“You’re not allowed to give up.” That was the central message Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny wanted to stress to his supporters in the event of his death. He said it in an Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about his life by Canadian director Daniel Roher, in which Navalny spoke about his political ideals and surviving a purported poisoning attack.
“If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong,” said the anti-corruption campaigner who arguably turned into President Vladimir Putin‘s most potent political challenger. “We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes.”
Russian prison authorities said Friday that Navalny had died after going for a walk, feeling suddenly unwell and then collapsing. The Office of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said medics at the IK-3 penal colony in Russia’s far north were unable to revive him.
Navalny’s own team said they couldn’t verify the information about his death on Friday, but the following day they confirmed it, saying he was “murdered.” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris unequivocally placed the blame on Putin’s government.
“This is of course terrible news, which we are working to confirm,” Harris said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. “My prayers are with his family, including his wife Yulia, who is with us today, and, if confirmed, this would be a further sign of Putin’s brutality. Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible.”
Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, spoke on stage at the Munich conference after Harris.
“You’ve probably all already seen the terrible news coming today. I thought for a long time whether I should come out here or fly straight to my children. But then I thought, ‘What would Alexey do in my place?’ And I’m sure he would be here. He would be on this stage.”
She made it clear that she didn’t trust any information coming from Russian government officials.
“They always lie. But if this is true, I want Putin, everyone around him, Putin’s friends, his government, to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband, and this day will come very soon,” Navalnaya said. “I want to call on the entire world community, everyone in this room, people all over the world, to unite together and defeat this evil, to defeat the terrifying regime that is now in Russia.”
Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, attends the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Germany hours after Russian prison authorities said her husband had died at a remote penal colony in northern Russia, Feb. 16, 2024. / Credit: KAI PFAFFENBACH/REUTERS
Russia has been condemned globally for its invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which sparked a grueling war set to enter its third year on Feb. 24. Navalny was a fierce critic of what he called the “stupid war” launched by “madman” Putin.
In a cruel twist, Putin and his political allies — who have run Russia for decades — have used the war as a pretext to enact harsh new laws in the name of national security, dramatically curbing free speech. Laws put on the books over the last several years have given the government power to lock up anyone who criticizes Russia’s military or its actions in Ukraine.
It’s all part of a wider crackdown on dissent that reached a crescendo after pro-Navalny protests swept across the nation following the opposition leader’s 2021 arrest, and then took on new dimensions amid the Ukraine war.
Hundreds of politicians, opposition activists, journalists and civil society figures — including some of Navalny’s own top aides — are in prison or have fled Russia into exile.
Street protests in Russia are illegal without prior permission, which officials don’t grant to anyone known to oppose the government.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy warns of an ‘artificial deficit’ of weapons after withdrawal from Avdiivka
Geir Moulson and Kerstin Sopke – February 17, 2024
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a speech at the Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. The 60th Munich Security Conference (MSC) is taking place from Feb. 16 to Feb. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris pose at the end of a joint press conference at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich, Germany, Saturday Feb. 17, 2024. (Tobias Schwarz/Pool via AP)Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, right, meet for talks at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich, Germany, Saturday Feb. 17, 2024. (Tobias Schwarz/Pool via AP)Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a speech at the Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. The 60th Munich Security Conference (MSC) is taking place from Feb. 16 to Feb. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris hold a joint press conference at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich, Germany, Saturday Feb. 17, 2024. (Tobias Schwarz/Pool via AP)
MUNICH (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned allies Saturday that an “artificial deficit” of arms for his country risks giving Russia breathing space, highlighting the need for artillery and long-range weapons after his military chief said he was withdrawing troops from the eastern city of Avdiivka.
Zelenskyy spoke to the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of security and foreign policy officials. Ukraine is back on the defensive against Russia in the nearly 2-year-old war, hindered by low ammunition supplies and a shortage of personnel.
“Ukrainians have proven that we can force Russia to retreat,” he said. “We can get our land back, and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin can lose, and this has already happened more than once on the battlefield.”
“Our actions are limited only by … our strength,” he added, pointing to the situation in Avdiivka. Ukrainian commander Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said early Saturday that he was withdrawing troops from the city, where outnumbered Ukrainian defenders battled a Russian assault for four months, to avoid encirclement and save soldiers’ lives.
Russia said later its forces took complete control Saturday of the city in eastern Ukraine.
“Dear friends, unfortunately keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war,” Zelenskyy said. “The self-weakening of democracy over time undermines our joint results.”
The president said that the troop withdrawal was “a correct decision” and emphasized the priority of saving soldiers. He suggested that Russia has achieved little, adding that it has been attacking Avdiivka “with all the power that they had” since October and lost thousands of soldiers — “that’s what Russia has achieved. It’s a depletion of their army.”
“We’re just waiting for weapons that we’re short of,” he added, pointing to a lack of long-range weapons. “That’s why our weapon today is our soldiers, our people.”
Speaking alongside European and other officials later Saturday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “all of us need much, much more artillery ammunition” and stressed that production must be ramped up. He said that “drones became a real part of the game; they will solve some problems, but they will not replace artillery ammunition.”
Zelenskyy on Friday went to Berlin and Paris, where he signed long-term bilateral security agreements with Germany and France, following a similar agreement with Britain last month.
Ukraine’s European allies are appealing to the U.S. Congress to approve a package that includes aid for Ukraine — $60 billion that would go largely to U.S. defense entities to manufacture missiles, munitions and other military hardware for the battlefields in Ukraine. The package faces resistance from House Republicans.
Asked whether it would be a good idea to invite former U.S. president and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump to Kyiv, Zelenskyy replied: “I invited him publicly, but it depends on his wishes.”
“If … he will come, I’m ready even to go with him to the front line,” he added.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said after meeting Zelenskyy later Saturday in Munich that “it is in the strategic interest of the United States to continue our support.”
“History shows us: If we allow an aggressor like Putin to take land with impunity, they keep going. The other would-be aggressors then become emboldened,” Harris said. She added that “we must be unwavering and we cannot play political games.”
Standing next to Harris, Zelenskyy told reporters that the aid package stuck in Congress “is vital.” It would provide a step forward for Ukraine, and “moving forward is much, much better than stagnation on the battlefield,” he said, stressing that Kyiv is counting on the U.S. to remain a “strategic partner.”
Also at the conference, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Congress’ delay has meant the flow of U.S. weapons and ammunition dropped, with a direct impact on the front line.
“Every week we wait means that there will be more people killed on the front line in Ukraine,” he said.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, whose country directly borders Russia, pointed to the history of the 1930s.
“If America isolates itself, it eventually is going to cost you more,” she said, warning that if “aggression pays off somewhere, it serves as an invitation to use it elsewhere, jeopardizing global security.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country is Ukraine’s second-biggest military supplier after the U.S., renewed his call for other European countries to step up with more deliveries, and pointed to America’s military aid since the war began.
“A comparable effort must be the least that every European country also does,” he said.
