the man who shook Putin's throne You probably recognize this man as Vlademir Putin,
Russia’s acting president since 2012, or maybe you define him as one of the most influential,
powerful figures around the globe. Either way, you’re absolutely right.
Indeed, he is well known for being a sting to many western countries, and there are
very few people who can actually stand on his way. However, there is this one man that has
proven to the whole world the opposite , Alexei Navalny, who was attempted to be killed in 2020,
after his recovery he conducted an extensive investigation, in which he explained the
process of his assassination attempt. Which we will simplify and explain to you.
But before we start, make sure to subscribe and hit that bell to turn on notifications.
Vladimir Putin has been holding a variety of jobs, but his most renowned one is from an intelligence
officer to a prime minister in the administration of president Boris Yeltsin in the late 90’s.
As a prime minister, he was determined to revive and rebuild the glory of Russia,
shaping the state to his vision. Upon this, Vladimir began implicitly
forming his allies, excluding whoever was against him.
He successfully managed to fortify himself in the government getting the Oligarchs to his side;
the Oligarchs consist of super wealthy businessmen who are also involved in
politics as part of their plan to rule the country accordingly with their interests;
The thing is, at first, they saw Vlademir as a puppet which they could play with.
However, he proved them wrong as he set himself above them once he became the head of the state.
Not only this, but ever since the very beginning, Putin has been portraying himself as a strong
leader, whose hierarchy ought to be abided by, and whose country doesn’t go with the flow;
this is to say that Russia is among the few countries that has its own set of rules.
as a communist regime, Russia refutes nearly all western lifestyles,
including the liberty to express one’s self. within this context, we could go back
to the “whoever was against him” part that we’ve mentioned earlier,
to elaborate how the freedom of speech exists in Russia; in short let’s just say that when it
comes to speaking of putin or the government in general, from activists to journalists,
oppression is pretty much the only answer; In 2006,for example, Anna Politkovskaya was found
dead in the elevator, shot with 4 bullets in different parts of her body, the death
of this journalist, writer, and human activist was preceded by a series of intimidation and violence,
due to her reports and comments about the second Chechen War.
In 2015, a Russian physicist and liberal politician called Boris Nemtsov dropped
dead on a bridge near the Kremlin after being shot. Once again his death was very suspicious,
for he was a leader of an opposition movement from 2000 until his death,
and he was murdered only two days before epic protests which he was planning against putin.
The targets don’t necessarily have to be in Russia, in 2018, a former intelligence agent
named Sergei Skripal was suspected to be a double agent for the UK’s intelligence services during
the 90’s. He and his daughter were poisoned and attempted to be killed by Novichok agents,which
are chemical weapons developed by the Soviet Union in the 1980’s, they are extremely dangerous
as they can cause loss of consciousness, breathing failure and Paralysis.
I guess by now, you already have an idea of what it’s like to be on the opposite
side of Putin’s. Nevertheless, Alexei Navalny was described in 2013, by The Wall Street Journal
as “The man Vlademir Putin fears the most”. It is indeed super odd to imagine such
a charismatic leader fearing a regular man. Well, don’t be mistaken, for Navalny is Russian
opposition leader, lawyer and anti-corruption activist, Whose foundation aims at exposing and
fighting corruption in the country; he is Putin’s opponent, whom he avoids referring to by name.
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny was born on June 4th,
1976, in Russia. He has more than six million Youtube Subscribers and more than two million
Twitter followers. Through these platforms he posts evidence about Putin’s filthy money and
corrupt government officials , while maintaining contact with his supporters, including countries
such as France, England, Germany . But being on that side has a bigger price;
for instance Navalny has been arrested and tried several times for his political comments and
movements, because of which, he was barred by Russia’s Central Electoral Commission
in 2018’s election against Putin. and although he lost, on the one hand,
Navalny gained a decent reputation and popularity in and outside of Russia, but on the other hand,
he brought more attention to him, making the president as well as several intelligence agencies
keep an eye on him. That brings us to the
essential part of the video. On August 20th, 2020 , as Alexei
was on board of a flight from Tomsk to Moskow, he fell into terrible pain that he couldn’t explain,
resulting in the captain to make an emergency landing in Omsk only 40
minutes after the takeoff. Not knowing what got into him, Alexei was taken to a hospital;
fortunately the landing was an important factor in Alexei’s survival as it turned out;
for this accident rose the attention of both CNN and Bellingcat, a british investigative journalism
website that specializes in fact -checking, which covered Navalny’s recovering from Omsk,
to Germany, and back to home, through their coverage, German test results showed
that Navalny was poisoned by the Novichok agents, which we’ve mentioned earlier.
However, this was discovered until Navalny was taken to Germany, because while in Omsk,
doctors insisted that no poisonous substances had been detected in Mr Navalny's body.
Bellingcat and CNN launched an investigation into Navalny’s accident. In which they were able
to build a solid theory; concerning the parties involved. Their results were later developed and
confirmed by Alexei and the FBK. This is what happened:
On August 14th,2020, Navalny and his crew had a trip to siberia. They flew from Moskow
to Novosibirsk; stayed there 2 and half days, then drove to Tomsk on the 17th.
On the 20th, they were supposed to go back to Russia, but as soon as the plane took off,
Navalny fell terribly sick. As soon as he recovered, Navalny
and the crew used black market data to carry on and back up CNN and Bellingcat investigation,
they checked the flight records of passengers from Moskow to Novosibirsk on the 13 and 14,
and then from Tomsk back to Moskow on 20 and 21. To their surprise, they found 3 more passengers,
who shadowed them and took the exact same route, whom they don’t recognize at all.
The first man is named Vladimir Panyaev; when the team ran his number on “Telegram Bot” to check
his personal information, the very first thing that popped up was “FSB Vladimir Alexanderovich
Panyeav'', A doctor or paramedic from the FSB. Here's the part where it gets a bit odder,
his former address matched Navalny’s, meaning that they shared the same apartment block.
So, this individual lived in the same area as Alexei,
shared his flights and he is a member of the FSB. As for the 2 other passengers, Alexey Frolov
and Ivan Spiridonov, when they typed their names, they found nothing on them: No cars,
no driver’s licence, no real estate, not a single thing except for their flights.
Meaning that they were using fake Ids. their real names are : Alexey Alexandrov, a graduate from
medical school in Moscow. Before joining the FSB in 2013, he worked as a military doctor. And Ivan
Osipov, a medical doctor by training. This led the team to run a background check
concerning their flights, only to find out that in 2020 Vladimir Panyeav made two trips only;
the one to Siberia that you already know about. The other one, though, was a flight to Kaliningrad
on the 2th of July. The same place where Alexei and his wife, Yuylia, flew to the next day.
At this point, the team was positive that the attempted murder was not random,
it was an operation assigned by powerful senior officials.
Upon this, Navalny and the FBK began analyzing phone call records of the individuals in CNN
and Bellingcat investigation; In order to crack it down,
they had to start from the tip of the iceberg; they checked every phone call that the “signal”
science center’s director, Zhirov, made before and after Navalny’s poisoning.
They discovered that he had several phone calls with FSB officials , which is obviously normal,
but among these calls, there was one that struck their attention.
Zhirov was in contact with Stanislav Makshakov, a chemical scientist in the FSB,
on whom they focused as he seemed to be the lead to bigger discoveries.
Indeed, Bellingcat’s reporters had already checked his phone calls data, which revealed
that Stanislav coordinated between two parties; On the top of the list we find the officials
including “Signal”s director, Zhirov, who contacted first Vladimir Bogdanov, the director
of Specialized Machinery Center and Deputy head of the FSB Scientific and technical services.
And second General Kirill Vasilyev, the head of the FSB institute of criminalistics. Zhirov
would also communicate with Stanislav, who was in contact with about 8 other people, including:
Oleg Tayakin, his cover name is Oleg “Tarasov” Konstantin Kudryavtsev, his cover name is
Konstantin “Sokolov” Mikhail Shvets, cover name Mikhail “Stepanov”,
And the first three men that we’ve mentioned. These men mainly had expertise in chemical
weapons; and executed the mission of killing Navalny which ended up in failure.
So, by now we have established a solid argument that a group of people from the FSB
is behind the murder attempts of Navalny. These individuals had been sharing the same
flights with each other and with Navalny since 2017, but in different combinations,
meaning that they would either reach Navalny’s destination before him, or let him arrive and
fly after him the next hours or day. There was a total match of 36 flights
over the course of 3 and half years. But wait, doesn’t the year 2017 ring a bell?
It is, in fact, the year which the FSB team was activated as a result of Navalny’s
announcement of running for presidency. According to Alexei, there is no other logical
explanation as to why the FSB would be involved in such an operation. Given the fact that it couldn’t
be done without the approval of the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, but the case still had
to be backed up with concrete evidence. That’s why Before going public with their
achievements, Alexei and the investigative journalists thought of a move,
if succeeded, It would break the news. Alexei would pose as “Maxim Ustinov”, a fictional
senior official from the FSB, calling to get “ a brief understanding from the team members:
what went wrong? Why was there a complete failure in Tomsk with Navalny?”
Indeed, Alexei’s phone number appeared to be from the headquarters of the FSB,
but still on all of his first attempts, Alexei’s voice was recognized by almost
every suspect they had in their investigation. until luck finally struck; Navalny had a call
with Konstanti Kudryavtsev, for nearly 45 minutes, explaining each and every aspect of the operation,
this was not an easy task because they started knowing three things
only about Konstanti; that He is a chemist, a member of a group of secret
killers, and on august 25th he flew to Omsk. Which they were able to get
from the flight records. throughout the phone call, Alexei managed
to get Konstanti’s confessions on video; Stating that he was assigned to go to Omsk
to get rid of Navalny’s clothes, as the poison was placed on his underpants.
Indeed, when Navalny woke up from his coma, his clothes had disappeared.
This is to say that another operation was launched to cover the tracks.
Moving on to explain that the team wasn’t expecting the captain to make
that emergency landing, that’s mainly why the operation turned into failure.
It was also revealed that the transport police took part in the mission,
Along the doctors in Omsk, including the chief doctor of the Emergency Hospital No 1 and the
chief toxicologist, who provided the FB members with essential tools and means.
And so, Navalny has proved that the man in the bunker,
as he nicknames Putin, was behind it all. But, as a response to these allegations,
president Putin confirmed that the FSB did tail each and every move of Navalny only because he was
suspected to be working for the US intelligence, and added that the video of the phone call is
fake and facilitated by foreign intelligence for the purpose of discrediting the FSB.
Vladimir sarcastically stated that if Russia had wanted him dead,
"they would've probably finished it." Justifying that when Navalny’s wife,
Yulia, addressed him to let her husband go to Germany for treatment, he gave the permission.
However, Navalny claims that Putin waited 48 hours in an attempt for
the poison to disappear from his body. As a matter of fact, when you connect the dots,you
come to ask why would most of these agents be poison experts, specifically the Novichok.
Especially that no official investigation was ever opened by the Russian authorities, instead,
as soon as Navalny returned to Russia, he was arrested in the airport and taken to be tried.
He was found guilty for violating his 3year and a half suspended sentence. And since he
had already served 11 months, He will be jailed for the remaining 2 years and 8 months.
The story of Navalny, one of Russia’s prominent opposition leaders,
and Vladimir Putin remains among the most puzzling and interesting stories in our era.
Who is right, and who is wrong? We can never actually tell,
as there are supporters to both parties, each accuses the other of dishonesty and betrayal.
However, we would very much like to know your opinion concerning this matter.
don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks for watching . I’ll see you in the next video, take
care.