As of: February 27, 2024, 1:05 p.m
By: Alexandra Heidsiek
Comments
Press
Split
In an interview published posthumously, Navalny speaks about hopes for Russia's future - and denounces passivity on the part of the West.
London – Alexei Navalny smiles into the camera.
He looks happy, exuberant.
“I’m an optimist,” he says.
Russia is not destined to allow itself to be led into autocracy by Putin.
Navalny died in mid-February - the interview is part of the unpublished documentary series
After The Fall
by director Matthew Torne.
The material has now been leaked to the British news channel
Sky News
.
Navalny interview published posthumously: Putin critic criticizes the West
According to the report, the interview took place in February 2020, a few months before suspected FSB agents poisoned Navalny with the deadly nerve agent Novichok.
By this point, the opposition politician and his team had long been in Putin's crosshairs: "It's probably difficult to find someone in my office who hasn't been arrested yet," he noted to the moderator.
Alexei Navalny.
© --/Navalny Life/AP/dpa
With his anti-corruption foundation, Navalny was a figurehead of the Russian opposition.
A film about a castle on the Black Sea that presumably belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin also secured them international fame.
However, the research into the wealth of Russian oligarchs was not limited to Moscow and the surrounding area: according to Navalny's team, many of Russia's wealthiest men and women maintain luxury villas abroad, including in Spain, France and England.
Russia's elite has established itself in Europe
Navalny denounced this fact in the now published interview: The members of the country's political elite had “moved their families, their children, all their assets to the West,” but the West “does absolutely nothing.”
There are some “ritual dances”, but nothing more.
By this he probably means the sanctions, which hardly seem to limit the oligarchs' extravagant lifestyle.
London in particular is considered a paradise for members of the Russian government: Putin's close confidants Roman Abramowitsch, Oleg Deripaska and German Khan own real estate here in close proximity to each other.
Money that is welcome in the English capital: “These corrupt officials feed a multitude of wonderful London lawyers” who serve the “interests of total bandits,” explained Navalny.
My news
2 hours ago
Putin’s decree is making waves – experts see preparation for “large-scale war against NATO” read
2 hours ago
Arrest in Berlin: Police end RAF terrorist Daniela Klettelesen's escape
1 hour ago
“Söder and Aiwanger keep adding fuel to the fire” – Where does the hatred of the Greens come from?
read
Russia openly threatens to shoot down NATO jets – read “return of particularly aggressive attitude”.
“The best armored personnel carriers of the war”: Ukraine gets a weapon with “high-tech features” read
Did Russia shoot down its own planes?
Ukraine is said to have outsmarted Russian anti-aircraft defenses
Sanctions imposed in the Ukraine war have no consequences
The problem is known.
So well known that in “Londongrad” you can even take part in a “Kleptocracy Bus Tour” that visits the oligarchs’ houses one after the other.
In an interview with the Organized Crime and Corruption Project, Oliver Bullough, investigative journalist and one of the organizers of the tour, reported on the progress the United Kingdom is making in confiscating the frozen assets of the oligarchs who have been sanctioned since the Ukraine war at the latest: “Absolutely none.
No progress.
None at all.”
Navalny would probably have confirmed that.
The opposition politician had recovered from the nerve agent attack on him in Germany and was sentenced to 19 years in prison when he returned to Russia.
He died there on February 16th.
Against this background, the last words of his posthumously published interview sound even more significant: “Russia is a European country.
Everyone who lives here wants to live like they do in Europe.
When you interview me again in ten years, I hope I can tell you how we defeated corrupt money laundering.”
(uh)