CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward is working closely with Alexei Navalny and his team to investigate the people behind the poisoning.
She spoke to Anna Cabrera of CNN about the investigation and the mistakes made by the Russian intelligence team.
Question: Why is he such a threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he wants him either in prison or dead?
A: Many people are really confused about why President Putin has gone so far to stop Navalny from doing his job. The easy answer, in my opinion, is that it has exposed rampant corruption in Russia and mobilized huge support online, especially with young people.
And there is a feeling that President Putin has no tolerance for real political opponents. You may remember that Boris Nemtsov was killed just a few hundred meters from the Kremlin a few years ago.
It is dangerous to get involved with the opposition in any way, form or form in Russia. And Alexei Navalny is the only most activating force the opposition has had for many years. So I think for these reasons, the Kremlin did everything in its power to try to stop it.
Question: You worked closely with Navalny and his team while investigating the assassination attempt against him. What was the most surprising thing you found?
A: I think the most surprising thing, to be honest, was to see how the Russian Security Forces (FSB) were in many ways very careless in their craft.
The highlight of this documentary was when Navalny actually called one of his potential assassins on the hotline, posing as a senior aide to the National Security Council. And this man he’s talking to actually ends up spilling beans, believing Navalny, his claim to be a senior administration official, and telling the details of how the poisoning was done – spraying the poison in his underwear. And this is the moment when your jaw drops, because you realize that sometimes there is an aura of invincibility around Putin’s Russia and this kind of Machiavellian slippery image that he has cultivated. But over and over again, we have found many cases in which they do things that other security services would be shocked by.
To give you another example, one of the potential killers actually called – he opened his cell phone the night Navalny was poisoned by a hotel just a few blocks from where Navalny was. And that made it possible for Bellingcat and Navalny’s team with us and some others to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
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