Navalny (2022) Movie Script
1
Rolling.
We're rolling, Daniel.
OK, we're going, guys?
Yeah.
OK, Alexei, I want to talk about
something that we sort
of touched on this morning, and you
might hate this, but I
really want you to think about it.
If you are killed, if this does
happen, what message do you leave
behind to the Russian people?
Oh, come on, Daniel.
No.
No way!
It's like you're making a movie for
the case of my death.
Like, again, I'm ready to answer
your question,
but please let it be another movie,
movie number two.
Like, let's make a thriller out of
this movie and,
in the case I would be killed, let's
make a boring movie of memory.
Alexei Navalny is stepping back into
another showdown with the Kremlin.
What to do with Navalny presents a
conundrum
for the Kremlin, let him go and risk
looking weak, or lock him up,
knowing it could turn him into a
political martyr.
SOME CHEERS.
CLAMOURING VOICES.
Are you not scared, Alexei?
What do you expect in Moscow?
CROWD CHANT "NAVALNY".
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE.
Unexpectedly, Vladimir Putin has a
genuine challenger,
a handsome 41-year-old lawyer,
Alexei Navalny, who has chosen one
of the most dangerous occupations in
the world -
running against the man who controls
the Kremlin.
More than any other opposition
figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny
gets ordinary people out to protest.
If I want to fight Putin, if I want
to be a leader
of a country, I have to do something
practical about it.
Well, I have to kind of organize
people.
I was banned from everything -
television, banned, newspapers,
blacklisted, rallies, forbidden.
I realised I can do a lot on my own
with the support of my wife, Yulia.
Just a small group of people I can
rely on, zero money,
a lot of work, internet, and that's it.
His youngest fans have turned to
TikTok, which has been crucial
in spreading the word.
Navalny's posted hundreds of videos
about his corruption investigations,
and they're wildly popular.
The Kremlin hates Navalny so much
that they literally
refuse to say his name.
Our office was raided and they just
confiscated everything - everything!
They splashed a toxic
liquid into my face and...
my first thought was,
"Jesus, I will be kind of a monster.
until the end of my days."
As I became more and more famous
guy, I was totally sure that my life
became safer and safer because I am
a kind of famous guy,
and it would be problematic for them
just to kill me.
And, boy, were you wrong.
Yes, I was very wrong.
Clapper!
So, we went to Siberia to make a
nice movie about local corruption.
I expected a lot of police.
I expected a lot of people who'd try
to prevent our filming,
confiscate our cameras or just break
our cameras or try to beat us.
I expected that sort of things and I
was very surprised, like,
"Why is nobody here?"
"Why is there kind of..."
I even have this strange feeling like,
like a lack of respect.
Seriously?
I'm here and where is my police?
The whole trip was the smoothest trip
I ever had in the regions.
I am a kind of slave of Thursdays,
Because on Thursday I have my
online YouTube show.
And then weekend, I can spend with
my family before another
trip to another region.
I was going home and then I died.
Passengers on his flight from
Siberia heard Alexei
Navalny cry out in agony.
Other passengers filming just after
the plane makes
an emergency landing in Siberia.
Navalny was then rushed to the
hospital where
he was put on a ventilator.
His spokeswoman saying Navalny was
poisoned.
His wife raced to be by his side.
We've come to the conclusion that,
judging by the fact
that there were no
poisons found in his blood,
or other biological materials,
he has a metabolic disorder,
lowering of blood sugar
levels to be specific.
We're hearing state agencies here
backed by the Kremlin
suggesting that hallucinogenic drugs
may be involved but not poisoning.
This morning an air ambulance from a
German charity landed.
We have to make sure his condition
is completely stable.
We cannot transfer him in
this state even if his family
have consented to it.
The moment when I heard the news
that Navalny was poisoned,
my first thought was...
can this be the Kremlin?
Would they be so dumb to try and
kill an opposition figure?
The main opposition figure?
I was sceptical, I thought,
maybe it's one of the...
many oligarchs on whose feet is stepped...
Either it's a state ordered attack
or it is somebody
who is trying to assassinate,
opposition figures in order
to at least Putin.
The closest anyone has come to
tracing a poisoning
to Vladimir Putin.
The 2018 attack in Salisbury,
England.
A defiant Kremlin insisting again
that he had nothing to do
with the brazen assassination
attempt of former Russian
spy Sergei Skripal.
Skripal was poisoned by the military
grade nerve agent Novichok.
The insidiousness of Novichok is
that it actually starts switching
off your nerve connectors in your
body one by one.
If it's dosed properly, it will just
turn you off as a body.
But then within hours any trace of
it will disappear.
So it was always, forever look like
it was a natural death.
And this is why it appears to be the
preferred form of killing
for people's whose death will be in
the public scrutiny,
such as... Navalny.
There was a lot of pressure for us
to start investigating.
Our media department
in Russia who reached out
to us and said, "can you help?"
We looked at them and we thought
there's no hope in hell,
we can investigate investigate
a crime that happened in Russia,
in the remote corners of Siberia,
sitting here comfortably in Europe.
We didn't even try in the beginning.
Alexei Navalny arrives at this
hospital in Berlin
with his wife Yulia.
A spokesperson tweeted:
"The struggle for Alexei's life and
health is just beginning.
Here at the hospital, both inside
and out, he'll be watched."
An opposition leader...
being poisoned by...
we don't know what,
we don't know how...
we don't know when...
and just be in a random hospital,
It was just...
It was surreal,
It was literally like a book.
The doctors assured they can't say
anything about his brain
to which extent he will recover even
if they manage to wake him up.
Many millions of Navalny supporters
are trying to out how to help.
We in Berlin are a small team.
We had to... dive into...
actually getting things done.
We all were very sceptical about
investigating Alexei's poisoning.
As opposed to previous cases,
this poisoning... took place
on the Russian soil,
so no one is going to share
a CCTV footage with us.
We're not going to have fancy
videos from the airport
where the poisoners fly in and out.
And as much as it hurts to admit,
while Putin is in power we'll
never find out the truth.
Yulia, how is your husband this
morning?
It was so crazy, like it's Putin's
signature poison.
We were actually so shocked.
So he didn't just decide to murder
him, but to poison.
And not just to poison,
but exactly Novichok. This was like,
really, like, leaving his signature...
on the crime scene.
When you come into the room of a
comatose patient,
you are starting to just
tell him the news...
Telling him his story.
Alexei, don't worry.
You were poisoned.
There was a murder attempt.
Putin tried to kill you
with Novichok.
And he opened his,
like, blue eyes wide...
and looked at me...
and said, very clear...
Come on,
Poisoned?
I don't believe it.
It's like, he's back.
This is Alexei.
Putin's supposed to be, like, not so
stupid to use this Novichok.
His wording.
His expletive.
His indignation.
If you want to kill someone,
just shoot him,
Jesus Christ.
Like, real Alexei.
It's impossible to believe it.
It's kind of stupid the whole idea
of poisoning with a chemical
weapon, what the fxxk?
This is why this is so smart,
because even reasonable people
they refuse to believe like,
What? come on, poisoned?
Seriously?
Traditional journalism implies
you meeting with a source,
and that source telling you a story.
In today's world of fake news, we
don't trust sources.
Because we don't trust humans.
We trust data.
Bellingcat is an organisation of
digital nerds most of us
with almost a little bit of
autistic-like fascination
with numbers.
Every time you use your email,
you make a phone call, you make a
doctor's appointment,
take a plane or a train, any time
you used the ATM.
Every time you actually look at the
screen of your phone.
That leaves a trace.
In a place like Russia, imagine the
person who works
at the travel agency that has access
to the flight manifests.
They're getting like, what,
$25 a day as a salary,
and then for another $25 they would
be able to sell
that flight manifest to
anybody who asks for it,
just because it'll double their
income for the day.
This is a whole industry.
Data brokers are on the dark web.
You negotiate the price and within a
few minutes they say,
"Yep, I can get that data
for you by tomorrow."
And then you have to send bitcoin.
Now, Bellingcat can't pay for that
data because it's a foundation,
so I have to pay for
that data myself.
Over the last five years of me
working on data journalism,
I would say I've spent $150,000.
My wife has no idea about this.
My wife suspects I've probably spent
$2-3,000.
If she knew the real quantum,
she wouldn't be my wife.
But she's gonna watch the movie.
She's not watching this movie.
And you have to tell her yourself ?
I'm absolutely sure,
she's not watching this movie now,
Our expectation was once he's
released from intensive care,
he will have a desire to go to
Russia immediately.
To our great relief,
he told me: "I better spend
several months here."
"I want to go back to Russia
strong and fully recovered."
For the longest time, I wasn't sure
what to make of Navalny.
I always wondered wondered
how much of an independent
figure he is or, is he one of the,
many, fake opposition figure,
created by the Kremlin.
I've criticised him on Twitter.
I mean, he was known for having
flirted with the extreme right
in the early days of his career.
He walked side by side
with some pretty nasty
nationalists and racists.
Had he moved beyond that?
Had he actually become a reverse
dark knight?
Within all my career,
I've been asked...
the same 15 questions all the time.
Are you afraid?
Are you working for Kremlin?
What is your family doing?
You have a responsibility
for your family.
If it is a foreign journalist,
they are asking
about nationalism and nation march,
And every one of them, Jesus Christ,
just watch previous interviews.
Hold on, were there not a couple of
Sieg Heil-ers at that thing?
Sorry?
Were there not a couple of
Nazi guys at that march?
Certainly a Sieg Heil-ers
are a different,
category that you would not want to
associate with or march beside.
Well, in the normal world, in the
normal, political system,
of course, I would never be within
the same political party with them.
But we are creating coalition,
broader coalition
to fight their regime.
Just to achieve the situation where
veryone can participate in election.
A lot of politicians woulf even be
uncomfortable to be associating
or being in the same photograph as
one of these guys.
You're comfortable with that?
I'm OK with that and I consider it's
my political superpower,
Poloitical super power,
I can talk to everyone.
Anyway, well, they are citizen of
Russian Federation
and if I want to fight Putin,
if I want to be a leader of a country,
I cannot just ignore
the huge part of it.
Well, there are a lot of people
who call themselves nationalists.
OK, let's discuss it.
We're living in a country
where they are poisoning,
a politician and killing people.
And arresting people for nothing.
Of course, I am totally fine to sit
with a guy
whose rally looks kind of
not very good for me.
The Russian media
didn't find anything,
and German investigators didn't have
the jurisdiction, so we realized,
there's nobody who's going to
actually actively investigate this.
Unless we jump into this.
We knew that the poison was Novichok,
and Novichok we had proven in the previous
investigation was only manufactured
in this facility called
the Signal Institute.
The Signal Institute in Moscow
works under the guise of a...
RNB center that develops advanced
forms of sports nutrition drinks.
That's the legend.
Yet, they employ for this work 12
scientists whose only
experience and background is in
chemical weapons.
Our hypothesis - this is the entity
that actually provides the poison
for the killers who travel around the world
poisoning people with Novichok.
So what we did is we bought
from the Russian black market
the phone records for the head of
the Signal Institute.
We looked at numbers
that only appear
just before the poisoning of Navalny...
and those were suspicious.
But, once we have
a suspicious number,
you go through a number of Russian apps
that allow you to see how that
phone number is listed
in other people's phonebooks.
So, for example, I put in
my number and it will show up as
Christo the journalist from Bellingcat,
because somebody would have
put my name into their phonebook,
and that description would
have been shared into this app.
First number I looked up showed up
as Alexei, doctor from FSB.
Well, that was interesting.
Doctor from FSB, Alexei,
But that was not enough.
We couldn't place a real
person under this name.
Then, I would look up if this
number showed up in any...
car registration databases.
And we found an actual Alexei
Alexandro who owns a car
and this number was listed for
contacting this person.
So then you have a real
person with a birthday.
Then, you look up his passport file,
you see his face.
You repeat that many times with
the other suspicious numbers,
and then you have a shortlist
of interesting people.
And these became our prime suspects.
Now, we knew when Navalny had
travelled to Siberia.
We had the actual passenger
manifests of six different flights
that had flown into Novosibirsk
where Navalny flew from Moscow
on the day before,
during, and after
the day in which he arrived there.
So, we needed to see if any
of those suspicious people
travelled to Siberia at the
time of the poisoning,
and we found an overlap.
We found a nest of wasps,
we didn't know existed.
It's a domestic assassination
machine on an industrial scale.
I was absolutely shocked that,
this was so fast and...
the whole plot disentangled so quickly,
so I just reached out by Twitter,
and said "Alexei,
I think we may have found...
who poisoned you."
After I went out of the hospital,
I decided to move...
into Black Forest,
and live in some small village.
You can just walk for hours,
and not meet any person at all.
These are my German friends, actually...
the little pony is my friend,
and donkey, is Yulia's friend.
And this is the routine of our walk.
Come here, my little pony.
Isn't he sweet?
Better than your donkey.
Everybody likes the small pony,
it's like usual, but donkey is...
You're scaring him.
Go away, go away...
Aw, you poor guy.
Donkey, hi.
Of course, you like me.
Oh God, come on,
This is a... very arrow woman,
Come on my mighty horse,
come here,
More carrot.
You'll grow big.
They are cute,
but they are not very smart.
So, they decided for their fence,
not to provide electricity.
Don't do it.
Yulia want an apple,
and asked me to take it.
But it's Germany,
so it's... someone's apple.
And there is a police over there.
I'll come there when it will be
dark.
And no police.
So, you're a Russian criminal
who arrived to Germany?
No it's like... it's a game,
It belongs to anybody,
I don't know.
How do you know?
Because it's open place,
there is no... anything... which...
This is a very Russian style,
of it you know, thinking about...
property like it,
belongs to everyone,
because it's an open place.
Just come and get it.
The story of this guy who lives in
Vienna but is Bulgarian but works
in Russia and that he has all of his
own money
and he spends it all on
investigations in Russian crimes.
He just sounded too suspicious.
Too good to be true.
Too capable?
He sounded a bit,
you know, made up.
Are you confident that
he is not MI6 or CIA?
I'm pretty confident.
I wouldn't say I rule it out,
but I'm pretty confident that he's not.
I was suspicious about
this guy from Twitter.
I just saw his old... laptop,
and all these tables with data.
Turns out, and I was very surprised
that the whole thing
about Bellingcat is just one smart
guy, no CIA involved,
no MI6.
He's just a nice and very kind
Bulgarian nerd with a laptop.
And I will show you,
probably less,
You'll tell me, if you recognise any
of the people in the photographs.
Getting through emotionally to
Alexei, was a piece of cake.
Took literally an hour.
Getting through to Maria took much
longer.
She was very tough.
She never smiled.
She was the one vetting me,
whether I am a spy or not.
But we needed information that only
his team would be privy to.
So we found a very workable
arrangement which was completely
ethical and acceptable to us.
We agreed that Maria Pevchikh would
be working as part of our team
and she would not be sharing with
Alexei all of the information
in real time so that we wouldn't be...
influenced by the bias of the victim.
When we discovered this
clandestine operation,
it was so shocking that even to us
it looked unbelievable.
I mean, come on, the government is
paying a whole team of 20
plus people whose only job is to
poison other Russians?
That sounds improbable.
So we needed other journalists
to look at it.
I would like to share the limelight
with some global media
so that is validated
by more than just us.
So, CNN and Spiegal
are fine with you?
Yeah absolutely.
That means we need to film exactly
like a week from now, maybe like...
We had a nightmare trying to get
everybody to stick to the same time.
It's all timed for
a simultaneous release.
All the media are going to drop the
bombshell simultaneously.
It's a huge debate as to whether
this was intended
to incapacitate or kill.
"incapacitate or kill"
"I would say kill, 100% kill."
If, for example, Navalny had laundry
returned to him while he was staying
at the Tomsk Hotel the afternoon
before he left,
would that be a point of access?
It's definitely a possibility.
The question is how well you can
dose the agent that way.
You put, let's say 10 times the
deadly dose on the clothing.
You must be sure, however, that you
get at least one lethal dose into the body.
Tomorrow we'll set up
a phone with fake ID.
So if we can call them through this
number we can try to prank them.
Yes, of course.
Navalny will call personally
these boys one by one
and we will record this.
Hi, this is Navalny.
You may remember me
from trying to kill me.
Is it your contention
that Vladimir Putin
must have been aware of this?
Of course, 100% it could have not
happened without.
Who's the most stupid?
Most stupid of them?
Well, definitely these are Spetsnaz
guys with no real training.
I think it makes sense
to try to prank stupid guys,
and... and maybe these non-military guys.
When you were a kid, did you have
any political awareness?
Was it a political family?
Did your family talk about politics?
Yes, my family talks about politics
all the time and it was very,
They start talk much more after
Chernobyl disaster
because actually my father and his family,
they are from Chernobyl,
from the small village,
two kilometres away.
And, I would say, ten kilometers
away from the nuclear station.
Everyone knows that there was an
explosion of a nuclear station,
but news keeping silence,
and so all this nuclear
and radioactive dust was on these
fields and they were forced to go
and plant potatoes just to prevent
rumours, just to explain population
that everything is fine.
Everything is OK!
Go and work in the fields!
And, with the first appearance of
Putin on the screen,
I just felt it.
I have this same feeling
like I am watching TV,
and I am watching political leader,
and he's looking into my eyes,
and lying to me.
This is the biggest
challenge for me, I...
Tried to practice juggling,
about a month
and because of coordination,
and balancing video, because you
need some balancing here, it's...
I'm very bad in it.
I think he wants to make sure this
hits home in Russian media.
I mean, I think that's
based on if he does it.
So, we're not being journalists
reporting about some politician,
but we're reporting about a
politician who has his own
YouTube show with over 13 million
followers and considers himself
half a journalist.
That's a very unusual situation that
doesn't make things easier.
Mum, is this yours?
no, you have water.
Hold my beer while
I make a TikTok.
No, no, no.
Just the second...
you just are filming me
with the scheme and I
must be "How Bizarre" ?
MUSIC: How Bizarre.
Hold on, again...
You should remove,
second one.
Oh, we can do that?
Yes, of course.
This is, you know...
I don't know,
I don't know how to do that.
Who's 19 ?
You, apparently...
You know that Christo call it
Moscow4.
Uh, you know what is Moscow4?
No... what is that?
Well, their email of their very top
guy from intelligence, was hacked,
several times, and his first password
was Moscow1 and they hacked him
so second his password was Moscow2
and they hacked him as well.
And so well the third time,
he had passcode Moscow3.
And just guess what was
his fourth password?
So Moscow4 is the explanation of the
stupidity of the system.
Dasha, could you take my phone,
and... will be in the kitchen pretending
you're... General Bogdanov.
OK.
Super.
Super.
Tomorrow, we will make these calls.
Honestly, I don't think it will work
because FSB guys.
They supposed to be resistant to
pranks.
Ah... but Moscow4, Moscow4.
Ah, yes, and then we arrange to push
the button and everything will be
published exactly at 12.
And also, I will publish my TikTok,
I recorded today.
And we'll have a kind of 15 minutes
of shame with it.
OK, see you tomorrow!
Hello.
Now I totally feel like I am a
undercover
agent with the wired up.
Are you not nervous?
Sorry?
Are you nervous?
No.
Please, come on a liitle bit,
He hung up.
Oh, my God, you ruined their day.
Not just today, I guess.
He hung up.
Maybe try the prank way?
OK.
That was a freaking scared guy.
He recognised your voice?
Yep, yep.
Mikhail's not stupid.
I really think a scientist might
talk to you.
1% chance.
OK, Let's, let's try to
reach some scientists.
Kudryavstev not interesting ?
Now we've got everything,
How could you do this?
Yes... so, now we know everything like...
Moscow4.
Oh my fxxking god.
Actually, he's not a muscle.
He's a chemist.
He's a chemist?
Yes.
He spilled the whole story.
This is unbelievable.
Poor guy.
They will kill him.
They will kill him, literally.
I think you'll be president,
seriously, after this.
Come on...
They will definitely kill me.
Poor Kudryavtsev.
Poor Kudryavtsev, yes.
He's a dead man.
Let's offer him to defect.
Let's arrange for him
the whole thing.
Seriously.
Cos I think that's a
humanitarian thing to do.
He will be in a ditch by tomorrow.
They'll just kill him.
No, no, no.
They will kill him.
OK, well Spiegel has been begging me
to call them since the morning
Can I tell them this already?
Confidentially?
Let's just decide.
Are we going to publish this
conversation?
Yeah.
Because I think
we should wait for a...
Putin's press conference, at the very least.
Sorry?
To Putin's press conference,
at the very least.
Yes... it is on Wednesday,
or Thursday?
Thursday.
Seventeenth.
Christo, before pushing this button,
I want to say...
that was amazing job.
Thank you everyone for your
contribution, guys.
Yeah!
High-five.
Now, an exclusive investigation can
reveal a top secret mission.
An elite team of operatives have
been tracking Navalny's every move
for more than three years.
Oh, thank you very much.
It's an honour for me to be on such
a big television of Spain and...
I'm very pleased you are paying
attention to this situation so...
thank you very much.
This scheme, which looks like it's
from the movies,
but in this particular case,
it's a real scheme, with real people,
Putin on the very top.
In mid-August, Navalny and his team
traveled to Siberia.
At least five members of the FSB
unit make the same journey
on different flights.
Well... they can't be telling him now,
but... of course, I'm sure they're trying to...
Thank you, thank you very much.
Back in Tomsk there was a surge in
communications among the FSB
unit and their bosses.
If it was expected that Navalny
would die on the flight,
they were now scrambling to deal
with a very different situation.
We enter a rundown apartment
building on the outskirts of Moscow
where operative Oleg Tayakin lives.
My name is Clarissa Ward
and I work for CNN.
Can I ask you a couple of questions?
Was it your team,
that poison Navalny ?
So, you've said that you want to go
back to Russia?
You're aware of the risks,
of going back?
Definitely.
Why do you want to go back?
I don't want this, you know, group
of killers exist in Russia.
I don't want Putin being president.
I don't want him being Tsar of Russia,
I want to go back and
try to change it.
So, this is fantastic piece.
He opened his mouth to American
songs.
On TikTok.
They are lying.
And lying crazy stuff, crazy stuff,
crazy funny stuff, like... who's he ?
But think about it, they're talking
about this all the time.
They talk about you.
And their version is... ha ha ha,
this is very funny
But the main point is...
they have a big problem otherwise
they would not launch it.
Right, right.
They allowed the state...
Number one channel that has never
mentioned his name...
to only talk about him now.
Yes, you're absolutely right.
This is a main point.
It's not affordable for them to keep
silence.
No, no.
She plays chess, chess,
better than all others in our family.
Better than everyone in our family
and because of this
series Queen's Gambit,
she's demanding that everyone should...
Play chess, but nobody is playing,
that is why I'm playing with the phone.
Well, I definitely prefer
"Call of Duty".
I definitely prefer chess.
I prefer shopping.
Ready for a 12-hour flight.
We have to sit down for good luck.
Starting from 13 years old,
I would think about,
what would I do,
if my dad was killed?
Whenever I had, like, the talk,
it's not anything you can
sit at the table and discuss.
So, it's nice for you for you,
Dasha, to see the snow,
so much snow before
you go to LA, right?
There is snow in California.
There was a point a year ago,
where my dad was almost not
there for my high school graduation.
He was in jail once again and, like,
the whole day I was just thinking
about how my dad would've been...
I'm sorry.
My dad would've been proud to see me
walk on the stage
and get my certificate.
And he... wouldn't get that option...
because... he was in jail
for doing the right thing.
I know that my dad misses Russia,
even though it's scary to go back.
And if he didn't go back,
I would say, you need to go back and fight.
It's something worth fighting for.
His favourite, favourite answer for
everything is CIA.
Great, great, great, great...
Ah...
Yuali...
Of course,
Because this is just
amazing pass to us.
Now, we can uphold,
because he said, well,
if we want to poison him, of course,
we would have poisoned him.
So, just... just, we will,
I mean, the whole argumentation,
we will smash it,
with or without bad piece...
I'm just very curious how people
will react to it,
whether they will be as astonished
as we are, hopefully.
Because nothing like that's ever
happened to anyone.
Now its, totally unbelievable.
I would never believe it
if I wasn't part of it.
300,000 views for 20 minutes.
One hour later.
1 million views.
The poisoning of dissident Alexei
Navalny has taken
an even more bizarre turn.
If this was a Hollywood movie you
would say it was over
the top, but this is not.
This is real and boy, does this
conversation punch a giant
hole in the Kremlin's narrative.
Surely, this is hugely embarrassing
for the Kremlin and for the FSB.
Oh, absolutely.
It's embarrassing for Mr. Kudryavstev,
it's embarrassing for the FSB.
It's embarrassing for the Kremlin.
The FSB has said that the video of
the conversation posted
on Navalny's YouTube channel was
fake and that the phone call
was a provocation aimed at
discrediting the agency.
Navalny is suffering from
delusion of persecution.
Otherwise, there's a Freudian
fixation on his own crotch area,
which is probably how all of this
should probably be treated.
How is President Navalny different
than President Putin?
Well, my major task as a president
just to prevent, you know this...
damn circle of really over-established
authoritarian regime.
In authoritarian country, you're
pro-authoritarian leader,
or you're against authoritarian leader.
So, we are in more primitive
politics, like human rights,
freedom of speech, fair election.
The power and money,
tax money, they supposed to belong
to the local communities,
and, in Russia,
everything is decided in Moscow.
So, being a president just having
this, you know, big pie
of my power and I will cut it,
for the future of Russia.
I apologise, I am sorry for the
record that five minutes ago
I told Daniel to get the fxxk out of
here with his camera so,
Like, I apologise for that,
because well, well everything is,
like... everything is happening in
the last ten minutes and I have
to make like a millions of emails.
And...
Leonid have a seat.
Maria have a seat.
You make me nervous because you're
standing over me, sorry.
Sorry, I have to sit.
It's a Russian superstition, but
it's important.
The anti-why police showed up and
are just arresting everybody,
including journalists live on the air.
This is crazy.
Jesus, jesus,
I've never seen anything like this.
There's no way they're not going to
arrest him.
I don't think they will let him come
close to the front.
I think they're going to yank him
away before anybody else
is let off the plane.
This is Moscow, and this is the plane,
and this is them,
They realised it's not possible
to control the crowd
and they chicken out.
Alexei, if you are arrested and
thrown in prison
or the unthinkable happens and
you're killed, what message
do you leave behind
to the Russian people?
My message...
for the situation that I am killed,
is very simple - not give up.
Do me a favour,
answer this one in Russian.
You can hear the story of Putin's life,
on the BBC's Sounds App,
or watch the inside story
"Putin, Russia and the West",
on BBC iPlayer.
Rolling.
We're rolling, Daniel.
OK, we're going, guys?
Yeah.
OK, Alexei, I want to talk about
something that we sort
of touched on this morning, and you
might hate this, but I
really want you to think about it.
If you are killed, if this does
happen, what message do you leave
behind to the Russian people?
Oh, come on, Daniel.
No.
No way!
It's like you're making a movie for
the case of my death.
Like, again, I'm ready to answer
your question,
but please let it be another movie,
movie number two.
Like, let's make a thriller out of
this movie and,
in the case I would be killed, let's
make a boring movie of memory.
Alexei Navalny is stepping back into
another showdown with the Kremlin.
What to do with Navalny presents a
conundrum
for the Kremlin, let him go and risk
looking weak, or lock him up,
knowing it could turn him into a
political martyr.
SOME CHEERS.
CLAMOURING VOICES.
Are you not scared, Alexei?
What do you expect in Moscow?
CROWD CHANT "NAVALNY".
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE.
Unexpectedly, Vladimir Putin has a
genuine challenger,
a handsome 41-year-old lawyer,
Alexei Navalny, who has chosen one
of the most dangerous occupations in
the world -
running against the man who controls
the Kremlin.
More than any other opposition
figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny
gets ordinary people out to protest.
If I want to fight Putin, if I want
to be a leader
of a country, I have to do something
practical about it.
Well, I have to kind of organize
people.
I was banned from everything -
television, banned, newspapers,
blacklisted, rallies, forbidden.
I realised I can do a lot on my own
with the support of my wife, Yulia.
Just a small group of people I can
rely on, zero money,
a lot of work, internet, and that's it.
His youngest fans have turned to
TikTok, which has been crucial
in spreading the word.
Navalny's posted hundreds of videos
about his corruption investigations,
and they're wildly popular.
The Kremlin hates Navalny so much
that they literally
refuse to say his name.
Our office was raided and they just
confiscated everything - everything!
They splashed a toxic
liquid into my face and...
my first thought was,
"Jesus, I will be kind of a monster.
until the end of my days."
As I became more and more famous
guy, I was totally sure that my life
became safer and safer because I am
a kind of famous guy,
and it would be problematic for them
just to kill me.
And, boy, were you wrong.
Yes, I was very wrong.
Clapper!
So, we went to Siberia to make a
nice movie about local corruption.
I expected a lot of police.
I expected a lot of people who'd try
to prevent our filming,
confiscate our cameras or just break
our cameras or try to beat us.
I expected that sort of things and I
was very surprised, like,
"Why is nobody here?"
"Why is there kind of..."
I even have this strange feeling like,
like a lack of respect.
Seriously?
I'm here and where is my police?
The whole trip was the smoothest trip
I ever had in the regions.
I am a kind of slave of Thursdays,
Because on Thursday I have my
online YouTube show.
And then weekend, I can spend with
my family before another
trip to another region.
I was going home and then I died.
Passengers on his flight from
Siberia heard Alexei
Navalny cry out in agony.
Other passengers filming just after
the plane makes
an emergency landing in Siberia.
Navalny was then rushed to the
hospital where
he was put on a ventilator.
His spokeswoman saying Navalny was
poisoned.
His wife raced to be by his side.
We've come to the conclusion that,
judging by the fact
that there were no
poisons found in his blood,
or other biological materials,
he has a metabolic disorder,
lowering of blood sugar
levels to be specific.
We're hearing state agencies here
backed by the Kremlin
suggesting that hallucinogenic drugs
may be involved but not poisoning.
This morning an air ambulance from a
German charity landed.
We have to make sure his condition
is completely stable.
We cannot transfer him in
this state even if his family
have consented to it.
The moment when I heard the news
that Navalny was poisoned,
my first thought was...
can this be the Kremlin?
Would they be so dumb to try and
kill an opposition figure?
The main opposition figure?
I was sceptical, I thought,
maybe it's one of the...
many oligarchs on whose feet is stepped...
Either it's a state ordered attack
or it is somebody
who is trying to assassinate,
opposition figures in order
to at least Putin.
The closest anyone has come to
tracing a poisoning
to Vladimir Putin.
The 2018 attack in Salisbury,
England.
A defiant Kremlin insisting again
that he had nothing to do
with the brazen assassination
attempt of former Russian
spy Sergei Skripal.
Skripal was poisoned by the military
grade nerve agent Novichok.
The insidiousness of Novichok is
that it actually starts switching
off your nerve connectors in your
body one by one.
If it's dosed properly, it will just
turn you off as a body.
But then within hours any trace of
it will disappear.
So it was always, forever look like
it was a natural death.
And this is why it appears to be the
preferred form of killing
for people's whose death will be in
the public scrutiny,
such as... Navalny.
There was a lot of pressure for us
to start investigating.
Our media department
in Russia who reached out
to us and said, "can you help?"
We looked at them and we thought
there's no hope in hell,
we can investigate investigate
a crime that happened in Russia,
in the remote corners of Siberia,
sitting here comfortably in Europe.
We didn't even try in the beginning.
Alexei Navalny arrives at this
hospital in Berlin
with his wife Yulia.
A spokesperson tweeted:
"The struggle for Alexei's life and
health is just beginning.
Here at the hospital, both inside
and out, he'll be watched."
An opposition leader...
being poisoned by...
we don't know what,
we don't know how...
we don't know when...
and just be in a random hospital,
It was just...
It was surreal,
It was literally like a book.
The doctors assured they can't say
anything about his brain
to which extent he will recover even
if they manage to wake him up.
Many millions of Navalny supporters
are trying to out how to help.
We in Berlin are a small team.
We had to... dive into...
actually getting things done.
We all were very sceptical about
investigating Alexei's poisoning.
As opposed to previous cases,
this poisoning... took place
on the Russian soil,
so no one is going to share
a CCTV footage with us.
We're not going to have fancy
videos from the airport
where the poisoners fly in and out.
And as much as it hurts to admit,
while Putin is in power we'll
never find out the truth.
Yulia, how is your husband this
morning?
It was so crazy, like it's Putin's
signature poison.
We were actually so shocked.
So he didn't just decide to murder
him, but to poison.
And not just to poison,
but exactly Novichok. This was like,
really, like, leaving his signature...
on the crime scene.
When you come into the room of a
comatose patient,
you are starting to just
tell him the news...
Telling him his story.
Alexei, don't worry.
You were poisoned.
There was a murder attempt.
Putin tried to kill you
with Novichok.
And he opened his,
like, blue eyes wide...
and looked at me...
and said, very clear...
Come on,
Poisoned?
I don't believe it.
It's like, he's back.
This is Alexei.
Putin's supposed to be, like, not so
stupid to use this Novichok.
His wording.
His expletive.
His indignation.
If you want to kill someone,
just shoot him,
Jesus Christ.
Like, real Alexei.
It's impossible to believe it.
It's kind of stupid the whole idea
of poisoning with a chemical
weapon, what the fxxk?
This is why this is so smart,
because even reasonable people
they refuse to believe like,
What? come on, poisoned?
Seriously?
Traditional journalism implies
you meeting with a source,
and that source telling you a story.
In today's world of fake news, we
don't trust sources.
Because we don't trust humans.
We trust data.
Bellingcat is an organisation of
digital nerds most of us
with almost a little bit of
autistic-like fascination
with numbers.
Every time you use your email,
you make a phone call, you make a
doctor's appointment,
take a plane or a train, any time
you used the ATM.
Every time you actually look at the
screen of your phone.
That leaves a trace.
In a place like Russia, imagine the
person who works
at the travel agency that has access
to the flight manifests.
They're getting like, what,
$25 a day as a salary,
and then for another $25 they would
be able to sell
that flight manifest to
anybody who asks for it,
just because it'll double their
income for the day.
This is a whole industry.
Data brokers are on the dark web.
You negotiate the price and within a
few minutes they say,
"Yep, I can get that data
for you by tomorrow."
And then you have to send bitcoin.
Now, Bellingcat can't pay for that
data because it's a foundation,
so I have to pay for
that data myself.
Over the last five years of me
working on data journalism,
I would say I've spent $150,000.
My wife has no idea about this.
My wife suspects I've probably spent
$2-3,000.
If she knew the real quantum,
she wouldn't be my wife.
But she's gonna watch the movie.
She's not watching this movie.
And you have to tell her yourself ?
I'm absolutely sure,
she's not watching this movie now,
Our expectation was once he's
released from intensive care,
he will have a desire to go to
Russia immediately.
To our great relief,
he told me: "I better spend
several months here."
"I want to go back to Russia
strong and fully recovered."
For the longest time, I wasn't sure
what to make of Navalny.
I always wondered wondered
how much of an independent
figure he is or, is he one of the,
many, fake opposition figure,
created by the Kremlin.
I've criticised him on Twitter.
I mean, he was known for having
flirted with the extreme right
in the early days of his career.
He walked side by side
with some pretty nasty
nationalists and racists.
Had he moved beyond that?
Had he actually become a reverse
dark knight?
Within all my career,
I've been asked...
the same 15 questions all the time.
Are you afraid?
Are you working for Kremlin?
What is your family doing?
You have a responsibility
for your family.
If it is a foreign journalist,
they are asking
about nationalism and nation march,
And every one of them, Jesus Christ,
just watch previous interviews.
Hold on, were there not a couple of
Sieg Heil-ers at that thing?
Sorry?
Were there not a couple of
Nazi guys at that march?
Certainly a Sieg Heil-ers
are a different,
category that you would not want to
associate with or march beside.
Well, in the normal world, in the
normal, political system,
of course, I would never be within
the same political party with them.
But we are creating coalition,
broader coalition
to fight their regime.
Just to achieve the situation where
veryone can participate in election.
A lot of politicians woulf even be
uncomfortable to be associating
or being in the same photograph as
one of these guys.
You're comfortable with that?
I'm OK with that and I consider it's
my political superpower,
Poloitical super power,
I can talk to everyone.
Anyway, well, they are citizen of
Russian Federation
and if I want to fight Putin,
if I want to be a leader of a country,
I cannot just ignore
the huge part of it.
Well, there are a lot of people
who call themselves nationalists.
OK, let's discuss it.
We're living in a country
where they are poisoning,
a politician and killing people.
And arresting people for nothing.
Of course, I am totally fine to sit
with a guy
whose rally looks kind of
not very good for me.
The Russian media
didn't find anything,
and German investigators didn't have
the jurisdiction, so we realized,
there's nobody who's going to
actually actively investigate this.
Unless we jump into this.
We knew that the poison was Novichok,
and Novichok we had proven in the previous
investigation was only manufactured
in this facility called
the Signal Institute.
The Signal Institute in Moscow
works under the guise of a...
RNB center that develops advanced
forms of sports nutrition drinks.
That's the legend.
Yet, they employ for this work 12
scientists whose only
experience and background is in
chemical weapons.
Our hypothesis - this is the entity
that actually provides the poison
for the killers who travel around the world
poisoning people with Novichok.
So what we did is we bought
from the Russian black market
the phone records for the head of
the Signal Institute.
We looked at numbers
that only appear
just before the poisoning of Navalny...
and those were suspicious.
But, once we have
a suspicious number,
you go through a number of Russian apps
that allow you to see how that
phone number is listed
in other people's phonebooks.
So, for example, I put in
my number and it will show up as
Christo the journalist from Bellingcat,
because somebody would have
put my name into their phonebook,
and that description would
have been shared into this app.
First number I looked up showed up
as Alexei, doctor from FSB.
Well, that was interesting.
Doctor from FSB, Alexei,
But that was not enough.
We couldn't place a real
person under this name.
Then, I would look up if this
number showed up in any...
car registration databases.
And we found an actual Alexei
Alexandro who owns a car
and this number was listed for
contacting this person.
So then you have a real
person with a birthday.
Then, you look up his passport file,
you see his face.
You repeat that many times with
the other suspicious numbers,
and then you have a shortlist
of interesting people.
And these became our prime suspects.
Now, we knew when Navalny had
travelled to Siberia.
We had the actual passenger
manifests of six different flights
that had flown into Novosibirsk
where Navalny flew from Moscow
on the day before,
during, and after
the day in which he arrived there.
So, we needed to see if any
of those suspicious people
travelled to Siberia at the
time of the poisoning,
and we found an overlap.
We found a nest of wasps,
we didn't know existed.
It's a domestic assassination
machine on an industrial scale.
I was absolutely shocked that,
this was so fast and...
the whole plot disentangled so quickly,
so I just reached out by Twitter,
and said "Alexei,
I think we may have found...
who poisoned you."
After I went out of the hospital,
I decided to move...
into Black Forest,
and live in some small village.
You can just walk for hours,
and not meet any person at all.
These are my German friends, actually...
the little pony is my friend,
and donkey, is Yulia's friend.
And this is the routine of our walk.
Come here, my little pony.
Isn't he sweet?
Better than your donkey.
Everybody likes the small pony,
it's like usual, but donkey is...
You're scaring him.
Go away, go away...
Aw, you poor guy.
Donkey, hi.
Of course, you like me.
Oh God, come on,
This is a... very arrow woman,
Come on my mighty horse,
come here,
More carrot.
You'll grow big.
They are cute,
but they are not very smart.
So, they decided for their fence,
not to provide electricity.
Don't do it.
Yulia want an apple,
and asked me to take it.
But it's Germany,
so it's... someone's apple.
And there is a police over there.
I'll come there when it will be
dark.
And no police.
So, you're a Russian criminal
who arrived to Germany?
No it's like... it's a game,
It belongs to anybody,
I don't know.
How do you know?
Because it's open place,
there is no... anything... which...
This is a very Russian style,
of it you know, thinking about...
property like it,
belongs to everyone,
because it's an open place.
Just come and get it.
The story of this guy who lives in
Vienna but is Bulgarian but works
in Russia and that he has all of his
own money
and he spends it all on
investigations in Russian crimes.
He just sounded too suspicious.
Too good to be true.
Too capable?
He sounded a bit,
you know, made up.
Are you confident that
he is not MI6 or CIA?
I'm pretty confident.
I wouldn't say I rule it out,
but I'm pretty confident that he's not.
I was suspicious about
this guy from Twitter.
I just saw his old... laptop,
and all these tables with data.
Turns out, and I was very surprised
that the whole thing
about Bellingcat is just one smart
guy, no CIA involved,
no MI6.
He's just a nice and very kind
Bulgarian nerd with a laptop.
And I will show you,
probably less,
You'll tell me, if you recognise any
of the people in the photographs.
Getting through emotionally to
Alexei, was a piece of cake.
Took literally an hour.
Getting through to Maria took much
longer.
She was very tough.
She never smiled.
She was the one vetting me,
whether I am a spy or not.
But we needed information that only
his team would be privy to.
So we found a very workable
arrangement which was completely
ethical and acceptable to us.
We agreed that Maria Pevchikh would
be working as part of our team
and she would not be sharing with
Alexei all of the information
in real time so that we wouldn't be...
influenced by the bias of the victim.
When we discovered this
clandestine operation,
it was so shocking that even to us
it looked unbelievable.
I mean, come on, the government is
paying a whole team of 20
plus people whose only job is to
poison other Russians?
That sounds improbable.
So we needed other journalists
to look at it.
I would like to share the limelight
with some global media
so that is validated
by more than just us.
So, CNN and Spiegal
are fine with you?
Yeah absolutely.
That means we need to film exactly
like a week from now, maybe like...
We had a nightmare trying to get
everybody to stick to the same time.
It's all timed for
a simultaneous release.
All the media are going to drop the
bombshell simultaneously.
It's a huge debate as to whether
this was intended
to incapacitate or kill.
"incapacitate or kill"
"I would say kill, 100% kill."
If, for example, Navalny had laundry
returned to him while he was staying
at the Tomsk Hotel the afternoon
before he left,
would that be a point of access?
It's definitely a possibility.
The question is how well you can
dose the agent that way.
You put, let's say 10 times the
deadly dose on the clothing.
You must be sure, however, that you
get at least one lethal dose into the body.
Tomorrow we'll set up
a phone with fake ID.
So if we can call them through this
number we can try to prank them.
Yes, of course.
Navalny will call personally
these boys one by one
and we will record this.
Hi, this is Navalny.
You may remember me
from trying to kill me.
Is it your contention
that Vladimir Putin
must have been aware of this?
Of course, 100% it could have not
happened without.
Who's the most stupid?
Most stupid of them?
Well, definitely these are Spetsnaz
guys with no real training.
I think it makes sense
to try to prank stupid guys,
and... and maybe these non-military guys.
When you were a kid, did you have
any political awareness?
Was it a political family?
Did your family talk about politics?
Yes, my family talks about politics
all the time and it was very,
They start talk much more after
Chernobyl disaster
because actually my father and his family,
they are from Chernobyl,
from the small village,
two kilometres away.
And, I would say, ten kilometers
away from the nuclear station.
Everyone knows that there was an
explosion of a nuclear station,
but news keeping silence,
and so all this nuclear
and radioactive dust was on these
fields and they were forced to go
and plant potatoes just to prevent
rumours, just to explain population
that everything is fine.
Everything is OK!
Go and work in the fields!
And, with the first appearance of
Putin on the screen,
I just felt it.
I have this same feeling
like I am watching TV,
and I am watching political leader,
and he's looking into my eyes,
and lying to me.
This is the biggest
challenge for me, I...
Tried to practice juggling,
about a month
and because of coordination,
and balancing video, because you
need some balancing here, it's...
I'm very bad in it.
I think he wants to make sure this
hits home in Russian media.
I mean, I think that's
based on if he does it.
So, we're not being journalists
reporting about some politician,
but we're reporting about a
politician who has his own
YouTube show with over 13 million
followers and considers himself
half a journalist.
That's a very unusual situation that
doesn't make things easier.
Mum, is this yours?
no, you have water.
Hold my beer while
I make a TikTok.
No, no, no.
Just the second...
you just are filming me
with the scheme and I
must be "How Bizarre" ?
MUSIC: How Bizarre.
Hold on, again...
You should remove,
second one.
Oh, we can do that?
Yes, of course.
This is, you know...
I don't know,
I don't know how to do that.
Who's 19 ?
You, apparently...
You know that Christo call it
Moscow4.
Uh, you know what is Moscow4?
No... what is that?
Well, their email of their very top
guy from intelligence, was hacked,
several times, and his first password
was Moscow1 and they hacked him
so second his password was Moscow2
and they hacked him as well.
And so well the third time,
he had passcode Moscow3.
And just guess what was
his fourth password?
So Moscow4 is the explanation of the
stupidity of the system.
Dasha, could you take my phone,
and... will be in the kitchen pretending
you're... General Bogdanov.
OK.
Super.
Super.
Tomorrow, we will make these calls.
Honestly, I don't think it will work
because FSB guys.
They supposed to be resistant to
pranks.
Ah... but Moscow4, Moscow4.
Ah, yes, and then we arrange to push
the button and everything will be
published exactly at 12.
And also, I will publish my TikTok,
I recorded today.
And we'll have a kind of 15 minutes
of shame with it.
OK, see you tomorrow!
Hello.
Now I totally feel like I am a
undercover
agent with the wired up.
Are you not nervous?
Sorry?
Are you nervous?
No.
Please, come on a liitle bit,
He hung up.
Oh, my God, you ruined their day.
Not just today, I guess.
He hung up.
Maybe try the prank way?
OK.
That was a freaking scared guy.
He recognised your voice?
Yep, yep.
Mikhail's not stupid.
I really think a scientist might
talk to you.
1% chance.
OK, Let's, let's try to
reach some scientists.
Kudryavstev not interesting ?
Now we've got everything,
How could you do this?
Yes... so, now we know everything like...
Moscow4.
Oh my fxxking god.
Actually, he's not a muscle.
He's a chemist.
He's a chemist?
Yes.
He spilled the whole story.
This is unbelievable.
Poor guy.
They will kill him.
They will kill him, literally.
I think you'll be president,
seriously, after this.
Come on...
They will definitely kill me.
Poor Kudryavtsev.
Poor Kudryavtsev, yes.
He's a dead man.
Let's offer him to defect.
Let's arrange for him
the whole thing.
Seriously.
Cos I think that's a
humanitarian thing to do.
He will be in a ditch by tomorrow.
They'll just kill him.
No, no, no.
They will kill him.
OK, well Spiegel has been begging me
to call them since the morning
Can I tell them this already?
Confidentially?
Let's just decide.
Are we going to publish this
conversation?
Yeah.
Because I think
we should wait for a...
Putin's press conference, at the very least.
Sorry?
To Putin's press conference,
at the very least.
Yes... it is on Wednesday,
or Thursday?
Thursday.
Seventeenth.
Christo, before pushing this button,
I want to say...
that was amazing job.
Thank you everyone for your
contribution, guys.
Yeah!
High-five.
Now, an exclusive investigation can
reveal a top secret mission.
An elite team of operatives have
been tracking Navalny's every move
for more than three years.
Oh, thank you very much.
It's an honour for me to be on such
a big television of Spain and...
I'm very pleased you are paying
attention to this situation so...
thank you very much.
This scheme, which looks like it's
from the movies,
but in this particular case,
it's a real scheme, with real people,
Putin on the very top.
In mid-August, Navalny and his team
traveled to Siberia.
At least five members of the FSB
unit make the same journey
on different flights.
Well... they can't be telling him now,
but... of course, I'm sure they're trying to...
Thank you, thank you very much.
Back in Tomsk there was a surge in
communications among the FSB
unit and their bosses.
If it was expected that Navalny
would die on the flight,
they were now scrambling to deal
with a very different situation.
We enter a rundown apartment
building on the outskirts of Moscow
where operative Oleg Tayakin lives.
My name is Clarissa Ward
and I work for CNN.
Can I ask you a couple of questions?
Was it your team,
that poison Navalny ?
So, you've said that you want to go
back to Russia?
You're aware of the risks,
of going back?
Definitely.
Why do you want to go back?
I don't want this, you know, group
of killers exist in Russia.
I don't want Putin being president.
I don't want him being Tsar of Russia,
I want to go back and
try to change it.
So, this is fantastic piece.
He opened his mouth to American
songs.
On TikTok.
They are lying.
And lying crazy stuff, crazy stuff,
crazy funny stuff, like... who's he ?
But think about it, they're talking
about this all the time.
They talk about you.
And their version is... ha ha ha,
this is very funny
But the main point is...
they have a big problem otherwise
they would not launch it.
Right, right.
They allowed the state...
Number one channel that has never
mentioned his name...
to only talk about him now.
Yes, you're absolutely right.
This is a main point.
It's not affordable for them to keep
silence.
No, no.
She plays chess, chess,
better than all others in our family.
Better than everyone in our family
and because of this
series Queen's Gambit,
she's demanding that everyone should...
Play chess, but nobody is playing,
that is why I'm playing with the phone.
Well, I definitely prefer
"Call of Duty".
I definitely prefer chess.
I prefer shopping.
Ready for a 12-hour flight.
We have to sit down for good luck.
Starting from 13 years old,
I would think about,
what would I do,
if my dad was killed?
Whenever I had, like, the talk,
it's not anything you can
sit at the table and discuss.
So, it's nice for you for you,
Dasha, to see the snow,
so much snow before
you go to LA, right?
There is snow in California.
There was a point a year ago,
where my dad was almost not
there for my high school graduation.
He was in jail once again and, like,
the whole day I was just thinking
about how my dad would've been...
I'm sorry.
My dad would've been proud to see me
walk on the stage
and get my certificate.
And he... wouldn't get that option...
because... he was in jail
for doing the right thing.
I know that my dad misses Russia,
even though it's scary to go back.
And if he didn't go back,
I would say, you need to go back and fight.
It's something worth fighting for.
His favourite, favourite answer for
everything is CIA.
Great, great, great, great...
Ah...
Yuali...
Of course,
Because this is just
amazing pass to us.
Now, we can uphold,
because he said, well,
if we want to poison him, of course,
we would have poisoned him.
So, just... just, we will,
I mean, the whole argumentation,
we will smash it,
with or without bad piece...
I'm just very curious how people
will react to it,
whether they will be as astonished
as we are, hopefully.
Because nothing like that's ever
happened to anyone.
Now its, totally unbelievable.
I would never believe it
if I wasn't part of it.
300,000 views for 20 minutes.
One hour later.
1 million views.
The poisoning of dissident Alexei
Navalny has taken
an even more bizarre turn.
If this was a Hollywood movie you
would say it was over
the top, but this is not.
This is real and boy, does this
conversation punch a giant
hole in the Kremlin's narrative.
Surely, this is hugely embarrassing
for the Kremlin and for the FSB.
Oh, absolutely.
It's embarrassing for Mr. Kudryavstev,
it's embarrassing for the FSB.
It's embarrassing for the Kremlin.
The FSB has said that the video of
the conversation posted
on Navalny's YouTube channel was
fake and that the phone call
was a provocation aimed at
discrediting the agency.
Navalny is suffering from
delusion of persecution.
Otherwise, there's a Freudian
fixation on his own crotch area,
which is probably how all of this
should probably be treated.
How is President Navalny different
than President Putin?
Well, my major task as a president
just to prevent, you know this...
damn circle of really over-established
authoritarian regime.
In authoritarian country, you're
pro-authoritarian leader,
or you're against authoritarian leader.
So, we are in more primitive
politics, like human rights,
freedom of speech, fair election.
The power and money,
tax money, they supposed to belong
to the local communities,
and, in Russia,
everything is decided in Moscow.
So, being a president just having
this, you know, big pie
of my power and I will cut it,
for the future of Russia.
I apologise, I am sorry for the
record that five minutes ago
I told Daniel to get the fxxk out of
here with his camera so,
Like, I apologise for that,
because well, well everything is,
like... everything is happening in
the last ten minutes and I have
to make like a millions of emails.
And...
Leonid have a seat.
Maria have a seat.
You make me nervous because you're
standing over me, sorry.
Sorry, I have to sit.
It's a Russian superstition, but
it's important.
The anti-why police showed up and
are just arresting everybody,
including journalists live on the air.
This is crazy.
Jesus, jesus,
I've never seen anything like this.
There's no way they're not going to
arrest him.
I don't think they will let him come
close to the front.
I think they're going to yank him
away before anybody else
is let off the plane.
This is Moscow, and this is the plane,
and this is them,
They realised it's not possible
to control the crowd
and they chicken out.
Alexei, if you are arrested and
thrown in prison
or the unthinkable happens and
you're killed, what message
do you leave behind
to the Russian people?
My message...
for the situation that I am killed,
is very simple - not give up.
Do me a favour,
answer this one in Russian.
You can hear the story of Putin's life,
on the BBC's Sounds App,
or watch the inside story
"Putin, Russia and the West",
on BBC iPlayer.