February 27, 2024 • 43 mins
On February 16th, it was announced that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had died in prison. The Vladimir Putin critic had been in Russian captivity on charges of embezzlement and extremism – and had recently been transferred to a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle, where Russian authorities claimed the 47-year old died from “sudden death syndrome.” In the wake of the tragic news, world leaders directly blamed Putin for Navalny’s death. In 2022, Alec Baldwin spoke with Daniel Roher, the director of the Academy-Award-winning documentary, “Navalny,” which follows the activist in the wake of his 2020 poisoning as he works to uncover those responsible for the assassination attempt against him, before voluntarily returning to Russia. Roher and his collaborator in the film, investigative journalist Christo Grozev, spoke with Alec Baldwin about Navalny’s bravery, why poison is the Kremlin’s weapon of choice and the final moments they spent with Navalny before his heroic return to Russia.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heys Alek. On February sixteenth, it was announced that Russian
opposition leader Alexey Navalni had died in prison. From January
twenty twenty one on, he was in Russian captivity because
of charges including fraud, embezzlement and extremism. Navalni had recently
(00:21):
been transferred to a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle,
where Russian authorities claimed that the forty seven year old
Putin critic died from sudden death syndrome after taking a
walk in the penitentiary. Many world leaders have blamed Vladimir
Putin directly for Navalni's death. In twenty twenty two, I
(00:44):
spoke with Daniel Roher, the director of the Academy Award
winning documentary Navalny. The film follows the activist as he
recovers from a previous Russian assassination attempt and the lead
up to his voluntary return to Russia. Here's my conversation
with director Daniel Roher and investigative journalist Kristo Grotzev. This
(01:10):
is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing
from iHeart Radio. When Russian opposition leader and fierce Putin
critic Alexey Navalni fell violently ill on a flight in
August of twenty twenty. It was suspected he was poisoned
by Novachak, a Soviet era nerve agent. He was medically
(01:33):
evacuated to Berlin and fell into a coma, but miraculously survived.
My guests today, filmmaker Daniel Rohrer and investigative journalist Kristo Grotzev,
were at the center of the unfolding drama that resulted
in the gripping documentary Navalni. The film documents the quest
(01:54):
to identify those responsible for the poisoning and the plight
of Alexei navan whose anti corruption platform landed him in
a Russian prison, where he remains to this day.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Come on poisoned, would's supposed to be not so stupid
to use this nauvichalk.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
If you want to kill someone, just shoot him.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Jesus Christ, It's impossible to believe it.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
It's kind of stupid.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
The whole idea of poisoning.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
With a chemical weapon. What the fuck?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
This is?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Why this is so smart?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Because even reasonable people they refuse to believe, like what,
come on poisoned?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Seriously prior to Navalney, Daniel Rohr directed the feature documentary
Once We're Brothers, Robbie Robertson and the Band about the
rock group. He also shot and directed several short dogs
and has been nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards. Roar
(02:56):
has been developing his craft since a young a. He
spent a year at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art
and Design, but found his passion in a high school
film class at the Tobacco School of the Arts in Toronto.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
We had this fabulous film teacher.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
He was like a sort of crimugey, cool nice guy
and he was very same mister Johnson Kevin, and he
had this film class, and so I had a little
cohort of film friends. We called ourselves the Man Clan,
and the joke was we were not manly at all.
We were a bunch of film nerds and we would
just This was when DSLRs became a thing, So about
(03:36):
ten years ago or fifteen years ago, you could buy
a little DSLR for seven or eight hundred dollars and
you could get a shallow depth of field an image
that looked like a movie. And to me, at seventeen
years old, that was revelatory and so my friends we'd
run around Toronto. We once had the subway system shut
down by accident setting off smoke alarms. My dad still
(03:57):
gives me a hard time for the time I set
up off the smoke alarm in his house when we
were seventeen or eighteen. But being creative, making movies, making things,
and it all started for me in a tobacoats, fabulous
school that I was able.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
To attend when I was a teenager.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Now when you went to SCAD, because I love SCAD,
and Scat's like a lot of these schools who over
the arc of my lifetime, you know, many decades now
they have you know, raised the money and grown so significantly.
And you know SCAD, when you go down there to Savannah,
they've taken over half the town. You know, every available
building they bought and have incorporated into that program. And
(04:32):
you went there for just one year and not even
a full year.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I went there for about a year. I was in
Savannah for one year and amazing place.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Super cool town.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
But I'm not a school guy, and it has nothing
to do with that school.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
It's just that no.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Matter what Kevin Johnson imparted to you, no, you had done.
I was finished with Kevin Johnson's mic Drop.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
That was it with keV.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
That was it. I learned everything you needed to know
from Kevin.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
From Kev's film class, mister Johnson's film class, I learned
everything I needed to know. And I decided that I
wanted to make documentaries and the best way to do
that would be to just make documentary. Why documentary, Well,
documentaries were this art form that for me existed at
the confluence of all these things I was interested in.
I was very curious about traveling and seeing the world
and history and art and culture and filmmaking, cinematography, editing,
(05:20):
but also music and drawing, animation, painting. Were your parents
in the arts, They were in retail, they's smutta business.
My mom and dad had a clothing store called Higher
Ground and Higher Round for Kids in Toronto for about
thirty thirty five years, and so my dad sold outerwear
like North Face, Patagonia, ur characters, Canada, Goose and so
we were always the spirit of travel was something that
(05:41):
we was always imparted onto. My brother and I would
go on canoe trips in Algonquin Park as teenagers and
as kids, and so I always had the sense of
traveling and getting out into the world with.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Something really important and valuable.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
And my dad has a bunch of corny phrases that
he always says that are just foundational to my life,
and one of them is travel off the bet path.
And certainly that's the choice I chose when I dropped
out of school and tried to pursue other things.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Now the film is out.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
The film is going to be released in eight hundred
cinemas around the US on April eleventh and twelfth. Oh, okay,
And this is obviously extraordinarily exciting for all of us.
A screen that's a lot of screens for a dog,
and certainly Warner Brothers, who were so grateful as distributing
the film, understands the critical mission of getting this film
out now as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
When did you first become aware of Navalne.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
I've been aware of Navalney for a few years now,
just because I'm interested in Russia and Russian politics and
geopolitics is something that I'm interested in. And if you're
in the West and you're interested in Russia and Navalne's
name is unavoidable. But certainly my interest in him peaked
in the summer of twenty twenty when news circled around
the world that he had been poisoned. And I remember
vividly this three day struggle when he was in this
(06:53):
hospital in Siberia and the authorities weren't letting him leave,
and there was this weird behavior happening, something strange was
going on, weird thing that they wouldn't let him go,
they wouldn't let him go to Germany, and eventually they did.
They relented. He was poison to sink in there a
little longer.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I think, so sink in or fade out, so the
Germans couldn't detect that. And so that was in my consciousness.
So at no point did it ever cross my mind
at that stage that oh, I should go make a
movie about this guy. It never would have entered my
my plane of reality.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, I just I was.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Sitting in Toronto painting an apartment. I just didn't occur
to me. It wasn't until I was sitting next to
this man, Krysto Grosev, who's here with us today, that
I thought, oh, maybe we should go make a film
about this, Maybe we should go pursue there is.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
The same way with all of even your earlier shorter films.
You do the one about sex abuse, but from the
priest and the indigenous People's played.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Them prolific sex offender in Canadian history as I made it.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
The name of the film is Survivor's Row Survivors because
his name is Roe.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
The man's name is Ralph Roe, who's an Anglican minister
that had this little prop plane and he would fly
up to these communities and everyone adored him. He was
like this wizard missionary fly in and everyone thought it
was great. And he'd take the kids on camping trips,
but only the boys. And it turned out that he
was one of the most insidious criminals in Canadian history.
He abused hundreds, if not thousands of boys. And so
(08:18):
when I was twenty one or twenty two, made a
short film with this extraordinary film producer in Toronto called
Peter O'Brien, and we made a film about this man's crimes.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Was in his idea and he hired you to director.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
That's right when I was twenty or twenty one, and
that film made a little bit of noise. People saw it,
and I think was very significant as a tool for
the community to heal and have that special but it
was very challenging and we've since entered a different place
in Canada. I don't know that that's a film I
(08:48):
would have directed now. I think that we would be
much better suited finding one of the many indigenous filmmakers
to tackle that story.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
But in that moment you feel sensitive about that, well,
very much course, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I think now it's very important we have to think
about who gets to tell what story. And in twenty
thirteen or twenty fourteen, when I made that movie, I
had no consciousness of that that's not something that was
on my radar. It was only years later later that
I reflected on it and questioned whether or not I
was the right guy to tell that story. And the
film was successful and I think the community was appreciative
(09:21):
that I made it. But I think now I would
I would really question that, and I would really seek
community consultation.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
And it's complicating to note that you're you know, when
you talk about your career in the brief minutes we've
been talking now, you lose sight of the fact of
how young you are, you know, So it was we
tell the audience that you're twenty nine years old, twenty
eight twenty oh, thank you very much. He's on Hollywood
full ball now, he's full flag Hollywood now, the twenty
(09:47):
eight year old Daniel. You don't realize it. You don't
been doing this for years now, and this inclusivity diversity
thing has unfolded most vividly during those ten years, during
your career, your.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Lifetime, absolutely, and especially in Canada, are consciousness about the
vital necessity of which communities get to tell which stories
has really.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Just come to the forefront.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
It's something that I'm mindful of, as you know, a
Jewish kid that grew up in Toronto. It's something that
I really have to think about.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
My view was that, you know, it's the success of
an individual filmmaker's career leads them to where they are today.
There's films you are making now that people are benefiting
from their learning about the world. Documentary films can often
be the beachhead for people to understand a topic, to
understand events and history beyond books and beyond classroom learning.
(10:34):
Documentaries have become tools for learning. And I say to myself,
the guy that's directing Navalney, let's be grateful for his
roots and how he got to where he is. But anyway,
I'd like to just shift for a second, because we
do have our other guest here, Christo Grosev. You sit
there and you see that navalney's going to come back
(10:54):
to Moscow, and you go, why why does he come
back to Moscow? Knowing he must have known what the
potential was. It seems to be being charged with embezzlement
all the time, and the charges dropped and he runs
for mayor and gets twenty seven percent of the vote,
which is significant but not anything earth shattering. But he's
(11:16):
got a political following. I want you to take me
through this line of right before he's poisoned. Where is he,
what he's doing. We're going to try you for embezzlement,
and then we suspend, we don't do this, we don't
do this, and then we poison you. Take me through
what's going on with Putin the Russians in the VoMi
before he's going to get poisoned.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, what we found out actually is that they tried
to poison him years earlier, so they started tailing him.
This whole unit of the Russian Security Service to the
FSB that comprises not only political police like the scary
muscle guys, but also chemical weapons specialists within the fs
B and doctors within the FSB. Saw a killed team,
a poisoned team. They started telling him the moment he
announced his bid for the presidency that was in twenty seventeen,
(11:57):
and they tailed him on a total of six six
trips around the country throughout his whole campaign, So every
little village he visited, they were there. They stayed in
hotels near him. They usually arrived just a couple of
hours before he arrived or were left just after he left.
So they were there waiting for a sign off from
apparently put in for him to be whacked, to be killed.
(12:18):
But this didn't come for years, or maybe it did come.
What we don't know is maybe they tried. But Moscow
four is a phrase that comes out in this film,
and people who see it will know that it's a
sort of a cold word for Russia's incompetence at the
official level, So it could be that they tried earlier
to poison him but it didn't work out. So the
only thing we see is that in July, just a
month and a half before the actual coma poisoning, the
(12:42):
same team followed him and his wife to their getaway
to a Baltic coast in Russia, in the Clinograd Coneberg,
and apparently they tried to poison them there again because
we see his wife falling almost into a coma because
she experienced similar symptoms to what he did in months.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So the wrong people eating the cuss is that the
problem with the KGB or the FSP. Well, they're just
not great at poisoning.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
They're they're not great, I mean they but they try again,
and they have what they lose in competence they make
up in resilience, so they do it years later. They
keep trying, They keep trying. They tried it twice on
another politician who lives here, actually, Vladimir Karamoza, same poisoning,
they poison here. They poisoned him there, he came back
here because his family lives here. He decided to go
(13:26):
back for a campaign trip. Six months later, poisoned him again.
So they tried. They tried many times, not just once.
So why that moment in time is the wrong question,
because maybe they tried for four years and that was
just the one time that they made enough sort of
dozage into get into his bloodstream by essentially smearing his underpants.
That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, Yeah, I went in through him through his lower
body parts exactly. So he goes to Berlin. He finally
gets out of there and goes to Germany to get
treated and is cured. Navalney, as I see him on
screen in Daniel's film, is crisp and sharp and alert
and bright eyed and doesn't seem impaired in any way
as a figure in the film. And then he gets
(14:08):
cured and he comes back again. Yeah, Like, like who
around him is counseling him? Who is advising him that
you could stay here and be the leader of an opposition,
You could tour the world and be the darling of
the Western world. Very few people would command the same
resources that Navalni camanded in raising money. He could be.
(14:28):
It could be like the Clinton Foundation, his foundation and
raising money for his activities. He could be. He's very charismatic,
and he could carry on his great work. Instead, he
decides to go home and they put him in prison
for night. Why does he go home? Why?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Well, you're preaching to the choir. You're asking the same
questions that I asked him, and I asked that his wife.
He looked at me like, I'm an idiot. How can
you ask this question? If I stay here, I just
I've become one of the many talking heads that just
talk to Russians from outside of Russia, and Russians would
never trust me. Russians would never believe me in unless
I partake in the daily in their daily misery.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And I'm sure the people offered him an effective and
compelling argument to the contrary. I mean, there's a lot
of great work you could do. What are you going
to be able to accomplish from a jail for nine years?
And then they have you that they're going to kill
you there?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Probably exactly We got to that conversation and basically says,
you're right. If I were a journalist, If I were
a journalists, I would stay here and continue, probably doing
a better job from here than from there. But I
want to be a politician. I want to be president
one day, and I can only do it.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
From there, from prison.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
From well, I asked him, do you realize that you're
going to prison? He says yes. I asked him, do
you think it's going to be for a couple of months?
He said no. Christ they don't get it. It will be years.
So he was completely open eyed about it. And I
asked his wife, does she realize that this is going
to happen? She said absolutely. So it's a different type
to be, a harder complex could be, could be.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
But what is your opinion? Why did he go back?
I mean, I'm sure you share some of the same
opinions he does.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I think fundamentally, what Alexai was not comfortable with was
the idea and notion of instructing, of telling, encouraging the
Russian people to take to the streets, to go up
against the regime, to risk getting arrested. He was not
comfortable saying those things, commanding those things, encouraging those.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
From a Parisian hotel, from a Parisian.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Hotel, from Ville, news from Berlin, from Vienna. If you
want to be the moral leader of a nation, which
is the role he currently occupies, you got to talk
is cheap. You have to be shoulder the shoulder, and
you have to be there. And I think that what
he is doing, his courage and bravery, hopefully will be
an inspiration to the Russian people, and I think that's
why he went back. But is it something that we
grapple with and struggle with to this day. Absolutely, was
(16:33):
it the right decision, I don't know, but that was
between Alexey Navolny and his higher power, and that's the
decision he made, and his family is lockstep with him.
But it's obviously something that we struggled with. And I
was like, I remember I was making the movie, and
I was hoping that we would get some sort of uncertainty,
some semblance of insecurity about the decision or the process.
(16:55):
The veneer of fear. The man's constitution was ironclad. He
never let on that he was afraid. He'd say, oh,
Daniel Jesus Christ, of course I have to go back.
What am I going to do sit in Germany? Forgive it?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
But I would imagine I understand what you're saying. I mean,
I understand his commitment, but I wonder if it's going
to be easier to poison him. I mean, is he
Jeffrey Epstein In the United States, we live in a
place where people are fatigued by scandal, they are fatigued
by what I call the conspiranoiac mentality.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Well, I would not be comfortable equivocating to Valney with
Epstein for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
No, no, no, no, But I'm saying in terms of he's a
sitting duck in a prison. Get the guy in prison.
If you want to whack and put him in prison,
you know where he is. You control his movements.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
He is in the custody of the same man who
tried to murder him.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Christa, what do you think, Well, just remember that what
happened to the previous guys that have tried to murder him.
They're dead now or one of them is most likely, right,
the guy that the ones that failed, Yes, guy, the
ones that failed so that they kill you. Well, basically, they.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
If you sit down with a bowl of poison, exactly fail.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So why would the new guy trying to g given
me that poison left?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
You remember the scene, the Marquee scene in our film
when Alexey makes a few phone calls.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I guess an extraction of confession.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
You remember that that part.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I don't want to ruin the film for now. Of course,
there's drama in this film, unlike any other doc I've
seen in recent memory.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Well, so we know that some of the individuals who
were fooled.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, the whole point is there was a set of
that Fresbee officers who were given the task to kill Navalni.
They failed, but they lived in with the belief that
their government, their president, their Kruk president, will protect them
from publicity, from that publicity, from neighbors taking revenge on them.
That didn't work out. These guys that tried to kill
(18:43):
them are now negative celebrities. They all of Russia knows
their faces. Their neighbors spray painted their their elevator would like,
our neighbor is a killer because they.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Were fact totems of the because they were murderous emissaries
of this government, or because they're actual fans of Navami
or both.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
No, because the neighbors actually didn't realize that the government
is a government of murderers, that their neighbors they didn't
realize that.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Oh, there are Russians who don't realize that Putin is
a murderers. Yes, yes, we're gonna We're gonna get that
in the second. And I do want to put a
button on what you said. You're very right, I did.
By no means that I mean to equivocate Epstein with
a Navalmi for obvious reasons. But I'm just saying that
that seems to be the key. You want to get
somebody in prison, because then you have complete control over
where they go, what they do. There's more opportunities to
kill them. So he wants to be a part of things.
(19:32):
He's willing to suffer. He's willing to take on the
horrible consequences to come back and one day hopefully get
out of prison. Do people of view Navali as a
viable political candidate if it wasn't in prison, if they
weren't trying to poison them all the time? Does he
have any chance to become the president of Russia?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I think he does. For years, the people who doubted
him were twofold. One of one part of Russia that
didn't like him were fed with propaganda that he's an embezzler,
so they just, oh, just a crew that just want
to get some of the government money. And another part
thought that he is a government proxy, that he's actually
a fake, full opposition figure, that he's very convenient for
(20:08):
put in because straw Man, because it's straw Man that
doesn't have a chance to get into the presidency, therefore
is an easy one. But after the poisoning, and especially
after the film and Honestly, any Russian who's seen the
film sees him as a viable presidential candidate. And that's
why I think this film has a big future for
changing minds and hearts in Russia. And that's why I
(20:29):
think and I know that Putin is so upset with
the film, not with the investigations so much, not with
Navande so much, but with the film because people who
see the film see him as a viable candidate.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
What did they say Navali embezzled?
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I think they said that he stole donations from his
from his found foundation. But what we have to understand
is they have a menu of stuff they just make up,
like the Russian judicial system saying what do.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
They accuse him?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
They accused him.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
I think there was taking money from his not for
profit he stole.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Originally they've said that he stole lumber and some sort
of commodity and then he stole money from the nonprofit.
It's nonsense. He insulted a war veteran, that's a crime.
Just weird, wacky whatever they can come up with things.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And he was given suspended sentences for two of these
embezzlement charges. Why why didn't they dump them in the prison.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Then, well, the first time I think it was in
twenty thirteen, during his run from mayor of Moscow. He
was sentenced to five years in prison. But the day
of his sentence, tens of thousands of people came out
to the streets in protest, and I think that rattled
the regime and they said we cannot we don't want
to deal with.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So if the response in public is full throated enough,
if there's a lot of people out there making noise about,
I'm going to assume that on a public relations level,
Navalney is a problem for Putin. Well he is.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
But what changed with naval How Navalney made it The
big problem for Putney is Putin had to take much
more drastic measures after he returned from Germany than before.
He had to say the islands of free media completely.
He had to crush the people coming to the streets
with force, beat old women like drag young kids in
(22:10):
horts to detention centers, and that closed a gap, that
closed the valve. But it actually allows the pressure to
increase now because these people come go to the streets,
but they have it inside them that this anger. So
it's a problem for Putting. Daniel Rhor and Kristo Grotzev.
(22:32):
The subject of another Daniel Rohor documentary was Robbie Robertson.
Robertson was also a guest on Here's the Thing check
out our episode with the legendary musician.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
We ended up recording the basement tapes. I don't know,
there's something like one hundred and forty songs or something
in the course of this. And what we would do
is every day we would go to Big Pink. We'd
have some coffee, play some checker. Bob would write. He
wrote on a typewriter, so he would type something up.
(23:05):
We'd go down into the basement grab everybody would grab
whatever instrument was closed, might even not be the one
you play anything because.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
There was no rules.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
We'd sit down, we'd mess around, play through a tune
and we'd say, wow, that felt kind of good.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
To hear. More of my conversation with Robbie Robertson go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Daniel
Rhor and Crystal Grotzev tell the story of how they
convinced Alexei Navalny to allow his life to be filmed.
(23:48):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to. Here's the thing.
The documentary film Navalny was shot prior to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. And while there is no shortage of
of nations to be leveled against the Kremlin, I wanted
to know what they feel is the most significant criticism
of Vladimir Putin and his regime.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well, it's corruption. It's really corruption. The one key word
that everybody in rush understance is driving away a value
from their daily life. They see the wealth of the
elite that has nothing to do with with what a
normal Western elite would have.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
And that elite for people to understand in the timeline
that elite began to accrue on a more concentrated level
since when. But that's recent, isn't it in the last
twenty years. Well no, there's always been people who profited
from that, like in this country, from war, profitia, et cetera. Right,
But but it seems to me like there's an oligarchical
suffice here that's bigger than now.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Suffice it to say that the oligarchical layer are buddies,
school buddies and judo buddies, and like college buddies have
put in so they came through him. They're actually hold.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
This has increased dramatically during Putin's reship.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Absolutely, I think.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Before that you didn't have as much of this.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Well, they had a couple of old and some of
them survives, but not like no. Yes, So that is
the one criticism that is exploited by somebody like Navalny
because it's easy to point out that it's visible.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
And what Nevalde would say if you were here is
that every single issue in Russia, it's its foundation is
in corruption, and if we can tackle corruption, we can
start to heal the society. But alex there's one thing
I want to speak to Earlier, you asked Chris so
quite appointed question, and that's whether or not Alexey actually
has a reasonable chance of ever becoming president. And one
thing I asked him the same question. I was like, dude,
(25:31):
are you like delusional? Like how is this actually going
to happen? And what he spoke to was the Moscow
mayoral race of twenty thirteen, and why that is an
interesting case study is because he started that race with
two percent of the vote. People didn't like him. They
caricatured him as just a blogger and some wacky Internet guy,
and he finished with twenty seven percent of the vote.
(25:52):
It wasn't a fair election. There was malfeasans. He narrowly
avoided a runoff, and I think the Kremlin, who let
him run in that election was so nervous about his performance.
He ran an American style campaign. He was kissing babies,
knocking on doors in the subways, distributing literature, tens of
thousands of volunteers. There has never been a political organization
in Russia like that. They were afraid. I don't know
(26:14):
if the guy will be president, but what I hope,
at the very least is that he will have the
chance to compete in a democratic election. Whether the Russian
people elect him is up to their own agency, is
up to the Russian electorate. I just hope, I dream
for a future or he can run.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
In this country, you have people who voted for a
candidate in twenty sixteen and again in twenty twenty. Who
does what a lot of conservatives do, which is they
give them a lot of predigested pablem about what the
conditions are in this country. You know, that's what Fox
News is. There's people that need their news predigested. Is
(26:51):
it the same in Putin's Russia. Is it like America?
Meaning does this Putin enjoy the support like Trump of
a massive number of poorly informed people.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, these are the lazy informationally lazy people. They are
fine with is getting their news from late night State TV,
which is the equivalent of Fox here, which is premesticated,
pre pre chewed, and they don't have time, patience, or
interest in getting more. This would be about sixty percent
of the population. Another twenty percent would be the people
who always doubted everything and would consider both sides to
(27:26):
any debate to be bad guys because in Russia, that's
how they grew up, being disappointed by the political elite
through centuries. And then twenty percent are the younger guys
who are actually interested in information actively. What changed with
the Navali poisoning and the protests after that is that
this twenty percent that was the disinterested twenty percent, they
actually became interested and they figured out finally that put
(27:49):
In is the bad guy here. But they were afraid
to go out to the streets. But that's still progress
because that doesn't make them uninformed, They just made them
makes them afraid.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
But the one other thing I want to speak to
which is piggy backing awful what Chrystal just said. I
think it's true that a large majority of the country
is being spoon fed this state media, but I don't
think it is totally the agency of the people. It's
like there's literally a vacuum of information. It's impossible to
obtain if you're living in the middle of the country,
if you're not savvy but anything stats and so Absolutely,
(28:21):
it's a totally different dynamic. It's a different dichotomy, and
it just really needs to be understood that in Russia
you cannot access other points of view, other information unless
you're a super savvy person who knows how to use
VPNs and who knows how to get around censorship.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I disagree with you, because even before this censorship was introduced,
there were islands of free media there. You could get
to Twitter, you could get to Facebook. People are just
too lazy. The next sixty seven percent of people just
don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I want to note for our listeners, this is the
first moment where Daniel and Cristo are in disagreement. Let's
mark this in this This is what we always dream
of on these shows. Now, how did you first, I
mean you investigated the poisoning, and you did a lot
of work writing about it and exposing the poisoning, correct,
you know, without giving away company secrets if you will,
(29:09):
and proprietary information. How do you go about that? How
does that begin? How did that begin? For you describe
in vague terms who you start calling.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It never starts with that investigation. It always starts with
the previous investigation that you've learned something that you keep
it at the back of your mind and it comes
handy later. So what happened in this case? We investigated
the poisoning of remember the Scripples, the former Russian double
spy who went to the UK and the Russian military
intelligence tried to poison them with novichjok in Salisbury in
(29:39):
twenty eighteen. So we had investigated this, we had cracked
this crime. We found out where the poisoners had taken
their physical poison, their Novi chok, and this turned out
to be a particular institution in Russia. And we're not
giving too much away, but it's a lab that we
discovered and presumed is giving poison to anybody who needs it,
like any government agency who wants to kill somebody gets
the poison from there. So we decided to trace those
(30:02):
guys from that institute, from that lab and see with
whom they talked in the days before Navali was poisoned.
And that's how we.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Found And how do you find that with it?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Well, that's the beauty of this crazy Russian corrupt system.
Because Russia is corrupt and dictatorial. The government wants to
have information on anybody at any given time, so they
gather all this.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Information on you, and that information is for sale.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
That information is for sale because it's correct, because Putting
cannot survive if it doesn't allow his FSB underlinks to
actually make money on selling whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Some of them are vulnerable, some of them are probable,
like you exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
They usually sell this to criminals. And suddenly here come
journalists who are taking a bit of the I've.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Got these voicemails from navalny. How much you want to
give me fifty? Come on, two hundred rubles? Come on,
you're joking.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
But I had this literal conversation with one of the
data traders who likes getting this data from FSB officers
and selling it. And when he found out that we
are actually publishing investigations that he wrote to me this
angry email. He said, I thought, to you, just a criminal,
you're a journalist.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
How dare you?
Speaker 2 (31:02):
So?
Speaker 1 (31:03):
He was so upset.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, so that's it's a crypt system and we exploited
the corruption to get the data.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
You first met Navalny.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Where we first met Navalney in the Black Forest, a
small town called Saint Plasian on the German French Swiss sport.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
And what was necessary describe for us? I mean, you're
a filmmaker and getting people to sit down with you
in front of a camera sometimes that's a pretty herculean
feet Well that's was it easy to get him in
the room or not?
Speaker 4 (31:27):
That's the art of documentary filmmaking is getting in the room,
it's being in the right place right. Well, I think
we had the best shot of anyone in the world.
And the reason that was is we were writing on
the coattails of Christo. Christo came to me one day
and I was there with my producer, Odessa Array, one
of the producers of the film, and Christo and I
were working on another project that wasn't going well. Christo
(31:49):
walks in, he says, there's something else and I was like,
what's that Crystal. He says, you know that navalne guy.
I said yeah. He says, I think I have a
lead and who tried to poison him? And I go,
who's making that movie?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Christo?
Speaker 3 (32:01):
He goes, I don't know? Should I ask?
Speaker 4 (32:02):
I'm like, yeah, you should fucking ask right now. And
because of the work Crystal had done on the screenpole Case,
he had cracked that very famous Russian poisoning story only
a few years earlier. Navollney was receptive and Ivonne understood
that this is the guy to be taken seriously. So
Crystal reached out. A week later, we were sneaking across
the German Austrian border, which is closed because of the COVID.
Where were you at the time we were in Vienna?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
What were you doing there?
Speaker 4 (32:25):
We were in Vienna in limbo, waiting to see if
we could go back to another recruited.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
You into the the NSA when you were you left
scad after You're come on, who recruited you? Come on?
I am? I mean I just had you in Vienna.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
You can't even joke about that. Because the Russians are
gonna take this interview. They're gonna take your voice saying
that to me. They're going to put it on state
media and they're gonna say, look, here's the evidence Alec
Baldwin knows that he.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Works for the same joking Vladimir. Yes, literally, it's too late.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
They're gonna take this and they're no, watch it happen, crosp,
it's gonna happen. You're gonna be on Russian state propaganda
calling me a CIA asset, even.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Though you were.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
This is how these Russians operate. They're like, oh, he
works for the state Department, he works for the stand.
They already said that, and so you joke. But it's
like I'm here being like wo woa, whoa, whoa. They're
going to use your voice calling me a say yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, that was a joke, Vladimir, let's we'll get that
on the cake. You for specifying.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I was in Vienna with Christo and Odessa.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
We were working on another project and in that former
Soviet state, it wasn't going well and I my wife
was spiraling, I was bugging out. I didn't know if
i'd go back to Canada, if I'd stick around for
a little bit longer. And then he walks in and
magnificently says what about navalne And a week later we
were sitting across from Alexa and his chief chief investigator.
I'm Maria Pevcik, and my job was to convince them
(33:40):
why we needed to make a documentary, why we had
to start right now. Chris, So what was your perspective
on that first meeting.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
He wasn't buying it. He was like looking at this
kid much younger. He didn't believe it, but he allowed
to give him a chance. And the way we agreed
with him is let's start rolling. And then we decided
later because otherwise you missing every moment every day not
being recorded, and that's what sold the whole project of Navoni.
And then a week later they were like best of
(34:08):
friends and it was on Google.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Wasn't going on?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
I would say best if I have to as a filmmaker,
I have to just maintain that. You know, Alexey is
an easy guy to hang out with. We bonded over
our wonkish love of politics and all of this, but
it's still important that I maintain a critical eye. This
is a guy who is controversial in his own way,
who's a complicated and compelling figure, and his complications make
him compelling. But he and I hit it off and
(34:32):
we enjoyed spending time together, and I think that's part
of the reason why we were able to mesh ourselves
in his cohort so naturally, so quickly.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Documentary filmmaker Daniel Rohor and Belling Cat journalist Krysto Grotzev.
If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Daniel Rhor and Krystal growth sp recount the dramatic final
(35:04):
moments with Navalni and his family before his heroic return
to Russia. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(35:24):
the Thing. I asked Daniel Rohr and Krystal Grotcev to
speculate on what is next for Putin amidst the rumors
of his ailing health.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
The important thing is that people at the top belief
that he has cancer, and that makes him vulnerable, and
that makes them unlikely to follow any order that he
gives them that endangers their own longevity political longevity. So
this is why Putin is not the sort of all
powerful dictator that he was a year ago.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Everybody knows that he may have cancer. And this is
what matters.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
What do the people inside Russia think? Who's his likely successor?
Is someone teed up Becau's what the Russians is often
a likely successor?
Speaker 2 (36:07):
You know what has been the strongest sort of strategic
talking point of the Kremlin. There's no successor if not
put In them who this is a phrase said phrase,
There's a vacuum there, It's a vacuum. That's why people
have actually not looked for a success and have sort
of embraced his willingness to be the president or that's
are forever. I don't think the people, the regular people
(36:27):
in the near future will decide who the success or is.
It's going to be still the oligarchs and the elite
and the generals. And I wonder if at some point,
because of this war, this egregious war, Navale doesn't become
a more acceptable alternative to the oligarchs because at least
with him, they know that he's going to tax them
thirty percent of their wealth, but they're going to preserve
(36:48):
their lifestyle. And we put In. They've lost everything. They
are not invited to any party in London or in
New York anymore. They can't travel. And this will change
if Navaldi comes to part well, comes.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
To power, I mean if Putin. I mean to take
me through this, because I'm yearning to hear your take
on this, which is that, if let's say theoretically Putin
dropped dead tomorrow, there's no chance in Navalni would become
the president. They're not going to hold an election, are they.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Well, it's going to be chaos and there will be
somebody who comes in as an interim power guy.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
So what is Navalne's path to the presidency? Even post put.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
What's going to happen is a fight, internal domestic fight,
strife among the different groups of the power elite. Putin
has made the only claim to fame that he has.
He has been able to manage these different interests within
the generals and within the FSB, and once he's gone,
it will be a fight everybody against everyone else. And
this is what has happened in every Western, normal country,
(37:45):
that is the normal path to actual democracy, which just
hasn't happened in Russia yet. So I think we're going
to see a couple of years of terrible dictatorship by
somebody else that will gradually go into a real election
at some point.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Why is poison the weapon of choice in these assassinations?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
So the first answer is that if it works, it is,
and it's deniable, you don't discover it. Now in this case,
they discovered it, but it was not meant to be discovered,
So it's just a heart attack, right. And the second
answer is if it doesn't work, then it's so scary
that it actually discourages the cent and it's good. It's
the worst way to die. You hear the shrieks, the
(38:23):
yells of yeah that you don't.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Want to die like that, So we want them to suffer.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
They want yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
So this is the chemical equivalent of dumb dumb bullets exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
But it's not new. It's not something that put An
invented it. He inherited it from the KGB. They love
this thing.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
You may remember sometimes it's untraceable, meaning someone's dead, and
you say, oh, it's a heart.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Attack, right, exactly. There was this Bulgarian journalist who was
killed with a poisoned umbrella. Remember in the seventies, in London.
That's what the KGP did. They prepared this umbrella with
a little pellet that had something like novich Chok and
he died.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
One of my favorite documentaries is Assassins. We were talking
about this before, where the two women believe are coached
because they think they're on a game show and they
killed Kim Jhalon's brother by rubbing the poison in his
eyes at the airport while they're presenting him with some
game show surprise. Anyway, that film Assassins was just absolutely numbing.
But you think, but obviously poison is better than spattering
(39:18):
somebody's head against the wall in a hotel. Well, if
you spattered even with a silencer.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
But the reality is, if you spatter someone's head against
the wall in a hotel, then you have, as as
one of the characters in the film says, a body
with a hole in it, that you have to explain.
If Alexe died on that plane, as the Russian government intended,
an autopsy would have been carried out by the criminalistics Institute.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
The same guys for poison him.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So it's really the perfect crime.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Are either of you, are you worried about your own
safety or were you ever worried about your own safety
during the production of this film.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
When you're sitting next to a standing next to alexeing
of only who's the bravest man on the planet, and
his staff who are actually in danger, you know you
can't help but feel inspired by their courage and bravery.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I think the Russians.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
Will continue to make efforts to discredit the film by
coming after me. That's why I take it so seriously
when we joke about this CIA recruitment stuff, because they
will literally take this and they will put it on
Channel one and they will say, oh, look, here's the evidence.
He's admitting it. He is from this agency or that agency,
which is nonsense. So I'm more concerned about character assassination,
you know, them finding someone I've never met who said
(40:23):
that makes horrible accusations about me, something like that.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
That's my concern. What do you think, Christo, No, I
totally agree with you.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
They will just go after your character. They'll probably send
some nice girls to sleep with you.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
What are you going to work on next? You're going
to do in a documentary about Abba somebody?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
I want to do something that is completely tonally different.
I have a few things in development that I'm apprehensive.
I don't want to jink, so I'm apprehensive to talk about.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
But most documentarians I know have a bunch of pots
on the stone.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, you have to, you have to.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
But this one was so all consuming and it's this
is a daunting one to follow up, as I'm sure
you can imagine. But I want to make something very soon,
and I want it to be totally, totally different. But
I love making documentaries, so I hope I get to
make another one now.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Navalney, what was the last time you were in his presence?
When did you last see.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
I can tell you exactly.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
It was January seventeenth in Berlin, Germany, at about one
thirty in the afternoon of this year of twenty twenty one,
twelve last year he got in. I filmed, I was shooting.
He went to prison when filming on January seventeenth was
the first day he was incarcerat of last year of
twenty twenty one, and I filmed him saying that you
see it in the film. He says goodbye to his colleagues,
and then we walked downstairs to the car park where
(41:34):
there are are cars, protective vehicles waiting for him. He
gets in the car, and I didn't. I was working.
I was shooting, so it's not like I could go
say thank you for so nice to meet you, goodbye.
He understood a line and you have to keep it
absolutely and he understood that, and I understood that. And
as he was driving off, I gave him a nod
and he gave me a nod back, and.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
He was off and you never spoke to him again. No, nothing, nothing. Well,
you've done this amazing job, because you have. Certainly, I'm
not saying this to be kind, and I know I'm
in a long line of people that are saying to you,
what a remarkable and what a talented filmmaker you are.
You's done a remarkable job with this film showing the
world who Navalny is, at least who we want to
(42:13):
believe he is. I'm disappointed that he chose to go
to prison, and although I understand the victor in Casablanca
kind of code, but your film is going to be
for many people in this country their introduction and their
first chance and an up close look at Navalney.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
And that's something that we take very seriously and it's
very important to all of us. As many people in
the world see this film as possible. The reality is
Alec that Alexey is in peril. He is in a
very bad spot right now. And the way that you
keep him alive is by keeping his name in the
global consciousness.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
So is he allowed to have visitors in prison.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
He can see his wife and his daughter once every
three months for an hour. This film is going to
be widely available and everyone in the world needs to
see it, and they need to tell their friends to
see it. Alexei's life depends on it.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Thank you both, Thank you director Daniel Rohrer and journalist
Kristo Grotzev. Navalny is currently in theaters around the world
and will premiere on CNNTV in North America on April
twenty fourth. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
(43:21):
and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperio. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Heys Alek. On February sixteenth, it was announced that Russian
opposition leader Alexey Navalni had died in prison. From January
twenty twenty one on, he was in Russian captivity because
of charges including fraud, embezzlement and extremism. Navalni had recently
(00:21):
been transferred to a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle,
where Russian authorities claimed that the forty seven year old
Putin critic died from sudden death syndrome after taking a
walk in the penitentiary. Many world leaders have blamed Vladimir
Putin directly for Navalni's death. In twenty twenty two, I
(00:44):
spoke with Daniel Roher, the director of the Academy Award
winning documentary Navalny. The film follows the activist as he
recovers from a previous Russian assassination attempt and the lead
up to his voluntary return to Russia. Here's my conversation
with director Daniel Roher and investigative journalist Kristo Grotzev. This
(01:10):
is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing
from iHeart Radio. When Russian opposition leader and fierce Putin
critic Alexey Navalni fell violently ill on a flight in
August of twenty twenty. It was suspected he was poisoned
by Novachak, a Soviet era nerve agent. He was medically
(01:33):
evacuated to Berlin and fell into a coma, but miraculously survived.
My guests today, filmmaker Daniel Rohrer and investigative journalist Kristo Grotzev,
were at the center of the unfolding drama that resulted
in the gripping documentary Navalni. The film documents the quest
(01:54):
to identify those responsible for the poisoning and the plight
of Alexei navan whose anti corruption platform landed him in
a Russian prison, where he remains to this day.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Come on poisoned, would's supposed to be not so stupid
to use this nauvichalk.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
If you want to kill someone, just shoot him.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Jesus Christ, It's impossible to believe it.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
It's kind of stupid.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
The whole idea of poisoning.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
With a chemical weapon. What the fuck?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
This is?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Why this is so smart?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Because even reasonable people they refuse to believe, like what,
come on poisoned?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Seriously prior to Navalney, Daniel Rohr directed the feature documentary
Once We're Brothers, Robbie Robertson and the Band about the
rock group. He also shot and directed several short dogs
and has been nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards. Roar
(02:56):
has been developing his craft since a young a. He
spent a year at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art
and Design, but found his passion in a high school
film class at the Tobacco School of the Arts in Toronto.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
We had this fabulous film teacher.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
He was like a sort of crimugey, cool nice guy
and he was very same mister Johnson Kevin, and he
had this film class, and so I had a little
cohort of film friends. We called ourselves the Man Clan,
and the joke was we were not manly at all.
We were a bunch of film nerds and we would
just This was when DSLRs became a thing, So about
(03:36):
ten years ago or fifteen years ago, you could buy
a little DSLR for seven or eight hundred dollars and
you could get a shallow depth of field an image
that looked like a movie. And to me, at seventeen
years old, that was revelatory and so my friends we'd
run around Toronto. We once had the subway system shut
down by accident setting off smoke alarms. My dad still
(03:57):
gives me a hard time for the time I set
up off the smoke alarm in his house when we
were seventeen or eighteen. But being creative, making movies, making things,
and it all started for me in a tobacoats, fabulous
school that I was able.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
To attend when I was a teenager.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Now when you went to SCAD, because I love SCAD,
and Scat's like a lot of these schools who over
the arc of my lifetime, you know, many decades now
they have you know, raised the money and grown so significantly.
And you know SCAD, when you go down there to Savannah,
they've taken over half the town. You know, every available
building they bought and have incorporated into that program. And
(04:32):
you went there for just one year and not even
a full year.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I went there for about a year. I was in
Savannah for one year and amazing place.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Super cool town.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
But I'm not a school guy, and it has nothing
to do with that school.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
It's just that no.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Matter what Kevin Johnson imparted to you, no, you had done.
I was finished with Kevin Johnson's mic Drop.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
That was it with keV.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
That was it. I learned everything you needed to know
from Kevin.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
From Kev's film class, mister Johnson's film class, I learned
everything I needed to know. And I decided that I
wanted to make documentaries and the best way to do
that would be to just make documentary. Why documentary, Well,
documentaries were this art form that for me existed at
the confluence of all these things I was interested in.
I was very curious about traveling and seeing the world
and history and art and culture and filmmaking, cinematography, editing,
(05:20):
but also music and drawing, animation, painting. Were your parents
in the arts, They were in retail, they's smutta business.
My mom and dad had a clothing store called Higher
Ground and Higher Round for Kids in Toronto for about
thirty thirty five years, and so my dad sold outerwear
like North Face, Patagonia, ur characters, Canada, Goose and so
we were always the spirit of travel was something that
(05:41):
we was always imparted onto. My brother and I would
go on canoe trips in Algonquin Park as teenagers and
as kids, and so I always had the sense of
traveling and getting out into the world with.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Something really important and valuable.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
And my dad has a bunch of corny phrases that
he always says that are just foundational to my life,
and one of them is travel off the bet path.
And certainly that's the choice I chose when I dropped
out of school and tried to pursue other things.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Now the film is out.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
The film is going to be released in eight hundred
cinemas around the US on April eleventh and twelfth. Oh, okay,
And this is obviously extraordinarily exciting for all of us.
A screen that's a lot of screens for a dog,
and certainly Warner Brothers, who were so grateful as distributing
the film, understands the critical mission of getting this film
out now as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
When did you first become aware of Navalne.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
I've been aware of Navalney for a few years now,
just because I'm interested in Russia and Russian politics and
geopolitics is something that I'm interested in. And if you're
in the West and you're interested in Russia and Navalne's
name is unavoidable. But certainly my interest in him peaked
in the summer of twenty twenty when news circled around
the world that he had been poisoned. And I remember
vividly this three day struggle when he was in this
(06:53):
hospital in Siberia and the authorities weren't letting him leave,
and there was this weird behavior happening, something strange was
going on, weird thing that they wouldn't let him go,
they wouldn't let him go to Germany, and eventually they did.
They relented. He was poison to sink in there a
little longer.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I think, so sink in or fade out, so the
Germans couldn't detect that. And so that was in my consciousness.
So at no point did it ever cross my mind
at that stage that oh, I should go make a
movie about this guy. It never would have entered my
my plane of reality.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, I just I was.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Sitting in Toronto painting an apartment. I just didn't occur
to me. It wasn't until I was sitting next to
this man, Krysto Grosev, who's here with us today, that
I thought, oh, maybe we should go make a film
about this, Maybe we should go pursue there is.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
The same way with all of even your earlier shorter films.
You do the one about sex abuse, but from the
priest and the indigenous People's played.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Them prolific sex offender in Canadian history as I made it.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
The name of the film is Survivor's Row Survivors because
his name is Roe.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
The man's name is Ralph Roe, who's an Anglican minister
that had this little prop plane and he would fly
up to these communities and everyone adored him. He was
like this wizard missionary fly in and everyone thought it
was great. And he'd take the kids on camping trips,
but only the boys. And it turned out that he
was one of the most insidious criminals in Canadian history.
He abused hundreds, if not thousands of boys. And so
(08:18):
when I was twenty one or twenty two, made a
short film with this extraordinary film producer in Toronto called
Peter O'Brien, and we made a film about this man's crimes.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Was in his idea and he hired you to director.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
That's right when I was twenty or twenty one, and
that film made a little bit of noise. People saw it,
and I think was very significant as a tool for
the community to heal and have that special but it
was very challenging and we've since entered a different place
in Canada. I don't know that that's a film I
(08:48):
would have directed now. I think that we would be
much better suited finding one of the many indigenous filmmakers
to tackle that story.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
But in that moment you feel sensitive about that, well,
very much course, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I think now it's very important we have to think
about who gets to tell what story. And in twenty
thirteen or twenty fourteen, when I made that movie, I
had no consciousness of that that's not something that was
on my radar. It was only years later later that
I reflected on it and questioned whether or not I
was the right guy to tell that story. And the
film was successful and I think the community was appreciative
(09:21):
that I made it. But I think now I would
I would really question that, and I would really seek
community consultation.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
And it's complicating to note that you're you know, when
you talk about your career in the brief minutes we've
been talking now, you lose sight of the fact of
how young you are, you know, So it was we
tell the audience that you're twenty nine years old, twenty
eight twenty oh, thank you very much. He's on Hollywood
full ball now, he's full flag Hollywood now, the twenty
(09:47):
eight year old Daniel. You don't realize it. You don't
been doing this for years now, and this inclusivity diversity
thing has unfolded most vividly during those ten years, during
your career, your.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Lifetime, absolutely, and especially in Canada, are consciousness about the
vital necessity of which communities get to tell which stories
has really.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Just come to the forefront.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
It's something that I'm mindful of, as you know, a
Jewish kid that grew up in Toronto. It's something that
I really have to think about.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
My view was that, you know, it's the success of
an individual filmmaker's career leads them to where they are today.
There's films you are making now that people are benefiting
from their learning about the world. Documentary films can often
be the beachhead for people to understand a topic, to
understand events and history beyond books and beyond classroom learning.
(10:34):
Documentaries have become tools for learning. And I say to myself,
the guy that's directing Navalney, let's be grateful for his
roots and how he got to where he is. But anyway,
I'd like to just shift for a second, because we
do have our other guest here, Christo Grosev. You sit
there and you see that navalney's going to come back
(10:54):
to Moscow, and you go, why why does he come
back to Moscow? Knowing he must have known what the
potential was. It seems to be being charged with embezzlement
all the time, and the charges dropped and he runs
for mayor and gets twenty seven percent of the vote,
which is significant but not anything earth shattering. But he's
(11:16):
got a political following. I want you to take me
through this line of right before he's poisoned. Where is he,
what he's doing. We're going to try you for embezzlement,
and then we suspend, we don't do this, we don't
do this, and then we poison you. Take me through
what's going on with Putin the Russians in the VoMi
before he's going to get poisoned.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, what we found out actually is that they tried
to poison him years earlier, so they started tailing him.
This whole unit of the Russian Security Service to the
FSB that comprises not only political police like the scary
muscle guys, but also chemical weapons specialists within the fs
B and doctors within the FSB. Saw a killed team,
a poisoned team. They started telling him the moment he
announced his bid for the presidency that was in twenty seventeen,
(11:57):
and they tailed him on a total of six six
trips around the country throughout his whole campaign, So every
little village he visited, they were there. They stayed in
hotels near him. They usually arrived just a couple of
hours before he arrived or were left just after he left.
So they were there waiting for a sign off from
apparently put in for him to be whacked, to be killed.
(12:18):
But this didn't come for years, or maybe it did come.
What we don't know is maybe they tried. But Moscow
four is a phrase that comes out in this film,
and people who see it will know that it's a
sort of a cold word for Russia's incompetence at the
official level, So it could be that they tried earlier
to poison him but it didn't work out. So the
only thing we see is that in July, just a
month and a half before the actual coma poisoning, the
(12:42):
same team followed him and his wife to their getaway
to a Baltic coast in Russia, in the Clinograd Coneberg,
and apparently they tried to poison them there again because
we see his wife falling almost into a coma because
she experienced similar symptoms to what he did in months.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So the wrong people eating the cuss is that the
problem with the KGB or the FSP. Well, they're just
not great at poisoning.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
They're they're not great, I mean they but they try again,
and they have what they lose in competence they make
up in resilience, so they do it years later. They
keep trying, They keep trying. They tried it twice on
another politician who lives here, actually, Vladimir Karamoza, same poisoning,
they poison here. They poisoned him there, he came back
here because his family lives here. He decided to go
(13:26):
back for a campaign trip. Six months later, poisoned him again.
So they tried. They tried many times, not just once.
So why that moment in time is the wrong question,
because maybe they tried for four years and that was
just the one time that they made enough sort of
dozage into get into his bloodstream by essentially smearing his underpants.
That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, Yeah, I went in through him through his lower
body parts exactly. So he goes to Berlin. He finally
gets out of there and goes to Germany to get
treated and is cured. Navalney, as I see him on
screen in Daniel's film, is crisp and sharp and alert
and bright eyed and doesn't seem impaired in any way
as a figure in the film. And then he gets
(14:08):
cured and he comes back again. Yeah, Like, like who
around him is counseling him? Who is advising him that
you could stay here and be the leader of an opposition,
You could tour the world and be the darling of
the Western world. Very few people would command the same
resources that Navalni camanded in raising money. He could be.
(14:28):
It could be like the Clinton Foundation, his foundation and
raising money for his activities. He could be. He's very charismatic,
and he could carry on his great work. Instead, he
decides to go home and they put him in prison
for night. Why does he go home? Why?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Well, you're preaching to the choir. You're asking the same
questions that I asked him, and I asked that his wife.
He looked at me like, I'm an idiot. How can
you ask this question? If I stay here, I just
I've become one of the many talking heads that just
talk to Russians from outside of Russia, and Russians would
never trust me. Russians would never believe me in unless
I partake in the daily in their daily misery.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
And I'm sure the people offered him an effective and
compelling argument to the contrary. I mean, there's a lot
of great work you could do. What are you going
to be able to accomplish from a jail for nine years?
And then they have you that they're going to kill
you there?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Probably exactly We got to that conversation and basically says,
you're right. If I were a journalist, If I were
a journalists, I would stay here and continue, probably doing
a better job from here than from there. But I
want to be a politician. I want to be president
one day, and I can only do it.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
From there, from prison.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
From well, I asked him, do you realize that you're
going to prison? He says yes. I asked him, do
you think it's going to be for a couple of months?
He said no. Christ they don't get it. It will be years.
So he was completely open eyed about it. And I
asked his wife, does she realize that this is going
to happen? She said absolutely. So it's a different type
to be, a harder complex could be, could be.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
But what is your opinion? Why did he go back?
I mean, I'm sure you share some of the same
opinions he does.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I think fundamentally, what Alexai was not comfortable with was
the idea and notion of instructing, of telling, encouraging the
Russian people to take to the streets, to go up
against the regime, to risk getting arrested. He was not
comfortable saying those things, commanding those things, encouraging those.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
From a Parisian hotel, from a Parisian.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Hotel, from Ville, news from Berlin, from Vienna. If you
want to be the moral leader of a nation, which
is the role he currently occupies, you got to talk
is cheap. You have to be shoulder the shoulder, and
you have to be there. And I think that what
he is doing, his courage and bravery, hopefully will be
an inspiration to the Russian people, and I think that's
why he went back. But is it something that we
grapple with and struggle with to this day. Absolutely, was
(16:33):
it the right decision, I don't know, but that was
between Alexey Navolny and his higher power, and that's the
decision he made, and his family is lockstep with him.
But it's obviously something that we struggled with. And I
was like, I remember I was making the movie, and
I was hoping that we would get some sort of uncertainty,
some semblance of insecurity about the decision or the process.
(16:55):
The veneer of fear. The man's constitution was ironclad. He
never let on that he was afraid. He'd say, oh,
Daniel Jesus Christ, of course I have to go back.
What am I going to do sit in Germany? Forgive it?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
But I would imagine I understand what you're saying. I mean,
I understand his commitment, but I wonder if it's going
to be easier to poison him. I mean, is he
Jeffrey Epstein In the United States, we live in a
place where people are fatigued by scandal, they are fatigued
by what I call the conspiranoiac mentality.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Well, I would not be comfortable equivocating to Valney with
Epstein for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
No, no, no, no, But I'm saying in terms of he's a
sitting duck in a prison. Get the guy in prison.
If you want to whack and put him in prison,
you know where he is. You control his movements.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
He is in the custody of the same man who
tried to murder him.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Christa, what do you think, Well, just remember that what
happened to the previous guys that have tried to murder him.
They're dead now or one of them is most likely, right,
the guy that the ones that failed, Yes, guy, the
ones that failed so that they kill you. Well, basically, they.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
If you sit down with a bowl of poison, exactly fail.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So why would the new guy trying to g given
me that poison left?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
You remember the scene, the Marquee scene in our film
when Alexey makes a few phone calls.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I guess an extraction of confession.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
You remember that that part.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I don't want to ruin the film for now. Of course,
there's drama in this film, unlike any other doc I've
seen in recent memory.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Well, so we know that some of the individuals who
were fooled.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, the whole point is there was a set of
that Fresbee officers who were given the task to kill Navalni.
They failed, but they lived in with the belief that
their government, their president, their Kruk president, will protect them
from publicity, from that publicity, from neighbors taking revenge on them.
That didn't work out. These guys that tried to kill
(18:43):
them are now negative celebrities. They all of Russia knows
their faces. Their neighbors spray painted their their elevator would like,
our neighbor is a killer because they.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Were fact totems of the because they were murderous emissaries
of this government, or because they're actual fans of Navami
or both.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
No, because the neighbors actually didn't realize that the government
is a government of murderers, that their neighbors they didn't
realize that.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Oh, there are Russians who don't realize that Putin is
a murderers. Yes, yes, we're gonna We're gonna get that
in the second. And I do want to put a
button on what you said. You're very right, I did.
By no means that I mean to equivocate Epstein with
a Navalmi for obvious reasons. But I'm just saying that
that seems to be the key. You want to get
somebody in prison, because then you have complete control over
where they go, what they do. There's more opportunities to
kill them. So he wants to be a part of things.
(19:32):
He's willing to suffer. He's willing to take on the
horrible consequences to come back and one day hopefully get
out of prison. Do people of view Navali as a
viable political candidate if it wasn't in prison, if they
weren't trying to poison them all the time? Does he
have any chance to become the president of Russia?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I think he does. For years, the people who doubted
him were twofold. One of one part of Russia that
didn't like him were fed with propaganda that he's an embezzler,
so they just, oh, just a crew that just want
to get some of the government money. And another part
thought that he is a government proxy, that he's actually
a fake, full opposition figure, that he's very convenient for
(20:08):
put in because straw Man, because it's straw Man that
doesn't have a chance to get into the presidency, therefore
is an easy one. But after the poisoning, and especially
after the film and Honestly, any Russian who's seen the
film sees him as a viable presidential candidate. And that's
why I think this film has a big future for
changing minds and hearts in Russia. And that's why I
(20:29):
think and I know that Putin is so upset with
the film, not with the investigations so much, not with
Navande so much, but with the film because people who
see the film see him as a viable candidate.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
What did they say Navali embezzled?
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I think they said that he stole donations from his
from his found foundation. But what we have to understand
is they have a menu of stuff they just make up,
like the Russian judicial system saying what do.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
They accuse him?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
They accused him.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
I think there was taking money from his not for
profit he stole.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Originally they've said that he stole lumber and some sort
of commodity and then he stole money from the nonprofit.
It's nonsense. He insulted a war veteran, that's a crime.
Just weird, wacky whatever they can come up with things.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And he was given suspended sentences for two of these
embezzlement charges. Why why didn't they dump them in the prison.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Then, well, the first time I think it was in
twenty thirteen, during his run from mayor of Moscow. He
was sentenced to five years in prison. But the day
of his sentence, tens of thousands of people came out
to the streets in protest, and I think that rattled
the regime and they said we cannot we don't want
to deal with.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So if the response in public is full throated enough,
if there's a lot of people out there making noise about,
I'm going to assume that on a public relations level,
Navalney is a problem for Putin. Well he is.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
But what changed with naval How Navalney made it The
big problem for Putney is Putin had to take much
more drastic measures after he returned from Germany than before.
He had to say the islands of free media completely.
He had to crush the people coming to the streets
with force, beat old women like drag young kids in
(22:10):
horts to detention centers, and that closed a gap, that
closed the valve. But it actually allows the pressure to
increase now because these people come go to the streets,
but they have it inside them that this anger. So
it's a problem for Putting. Daniel Rhor and Kristo Grotzev.
(22:32):
The subject of another Daniel Rohor documentary was Robbie Robertson.
Robertson was also a guest on Here's the Thing check
out our episode with the legendary musician.
Speaker 5 (22:43):
We ended up recording the basement tapes. I don't know,
there's something like one hundred and forty songs or something
in the course of this. And what we would do
is every day we would go to Big Pink. We'd
have some coffee, play some checker. Bob would write. He
wrote on a typewriter, so he would type something up.
(23:05):
We'd go down into the basement grab everybody would grab
whatever instrument was closed, might even not be the one
you play anything because.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
There was no rules.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
We'd sit down, we'd mess around, play through a tune
and we'd say, wow, that felt kind of good.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
To hear. More of my conversation with Robbie Robertson go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Daniel
Rhor and Crystal Grotzev tell the story of how they
convinced Alexei Navalny to allow his life to be filmed.
(23:48):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to. Here's the thing.
The documentary film Navalny was shot prior to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. And while there is no shortage of
of nations to be leveled against the Kremlin, I wanted
to know what they feel is the most significant criticism
of Vladimir Putin and his regime.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well, it's corruption. It's really corruption. The one key word
that everybody in rush understance is driving away a value
from their daily life. They see the wealth of the
elite that has nothing to do with with what a
normal Western elite would have.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
And that elite for people to understand in the timeline
that elite began to accrue on a more concentrated level
since when. But that's recent, isn't it in the last
twenty years. Well no, there's always been people who profited
from that, like in this country, from war, profitia, et cetera. Right,
But but it seems to me like there's an oligarchical
suffice here that's bigger than now.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Suffice it to say that the oligarchical layer are buddies,
school buddies and judo buddies, and like college buddies have
put in so they came through him. They're actually hold.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
This has increased dramatically during Putin's reship.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Absolutely, I think.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Before that you didn't have as much of this.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Well, they had a couple of old and some of
them survives, but not like no. Yes, So that is
the one criticism that is exploited by somebody like Navalny
because it's easy to point out that it's visible.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
And what Nevalde would say if you were here is
that every single issue in Russia, it's its foundation is
in corruption, and if we can tackle corruption, we can
start to heal the society. But alex there's one thing
I want to speak to Earlier, you asked Chris so
quite appointed question, and that's whether or not Alexey actually
has a reasonable chance of ever becoming president. And one
thing I asked him the same question. I was like, dude,
(25:31):
are you like delusional? Like how is this actually going
to happen? And what he spoke to was the Moscow
mayoral race of twenty thirteen, and why that is an
interesting case study is because he started that race with
two percent of the vote. People didn't like him. They
caricatured him as just a blogger and some wacky Internet guy,
and he finished with twenty seven percent of the vote.
(25:52):
It wasn't a fair election. There was malfeasans. He narrowly
avoided a runoff, and I think the Kremlin, who let
him run in that election was so nervous about his performance.
He ran an American style campaign. He was kissing babies,
knocking on doors in the subways, distributing literature, tens of
thousands of volunteers. There has never been a political organization
in Russia like that. They were afraid. I don't know
(26:14):
if the guy will be president, but what I hope,
at the very least is that he will have the
chance to compete in a democratic election. Whether the Russian
people elect him is up to their own agency, is
up to the Russian electorate. I just hope, I dream
for a future or he can run.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
In this country, you have people who voted for a
candidate in twenty sixteen and again in twenty twenty. Who
does what a lot of conservatives do, which is they
give them a lot of predigested pablem about what the
conditions are in this country. You know, that's what Fox
News is. There's people that need their news predigested. Is
(26:51):
it the same in Putin's Russia. Is it like America?
Meaning does this Putin enjoy the support like Trump of
a massive number of poorly informed people.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, these are the lazy informationally lazy people. They are
fine with is getting their news from late night State TV,
which is the equivalent of Fox here, which is premesticated,
pre pre chewed, and they don't have time, patience, or
interest in getting more. This would be about sixty percent
of the population. Another twenty percent would be the people
who always doubted everything and would consider both sides to
(27:26):
any debate to be bad guys because in Russia, that's
how they grew up, being disappointed by the political elite
through centuries. And then twenty percent are the younger guys
who are actually interested in information actively. What changed with
the Navali poisoning and the protests after that is that
this twenty percent that was the disinterested twenty percent, they
actually became interested and they figured out finally that put
(27:49):
In is the bad guy here. But they were afraid
to go out to the streets. But that's still progress
because that doesn't make them uninformed, They just made them
makes them afraid.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
But the one other thing I want to speak to
which is piggy backing awful what Chrystal just said. I
think it's true that a large majority of the country
is being spoon fed this state media, but I don't
think it is totally the agency of the people. It's
like there's literally a vacuum of information. It's impossible to
obtain if you're living in the middle of the country,
if you're not savvy but anything stats and so Absolutely,
(28:21):
it's a totally different dynamic. It's a different dichotomy, and
it just really needs to be understood that in Russia
you cannot access other points of view, other information unless
you're a super savvy person who knows how to use
VPNs and who knows how to get around censorship.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I disagree with you, because even before this censorship was introduced,
there were islands of free media there. You could get
to Twitter, you could get to Facebook. People are just
too lazy. The next sixty seven percent of people just
don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I want to note for our listeners, this is the
first moment where Daniel and Cristo are in disagreement. Let's
mark this in this This is what we always dream
of on these shows. Now, how did you first, I
mean you investigated the poisoning, and you did a lot
of work writing about it and exposing the poisoning, correct,
you know, without giving away company secrets if you will,
(29:09):
and proprietary information. How do you go about that? How
does that begin? How did that begin? For you describe
in vague terms who you start calling.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It never starts with that investigation. It always starts with
the previous investigation that you've learned something that you keep
it at the back of your mind and it comes
handy later. So what happened in this case? We investigated
the poisoning of remember the Scripples, the former Russian double
spy who went to the UK and the Russian military
intelligence tried to poison them with novichjok in Salisbury in
(29:39):
twenty eighteen. So we had investigated this, we had cracked
this crime. We found out where the poisoners had taken
their physical poison, their Novi chok, and this turned out
to be a particular institution in Russia. And we're not
giving too much away, but it's a lab that we
discovered and presumed is giving poison to anybody who needs it,
like any government agency who wants to kill somebody gets
the poison from there. So we decided to trace those
(30:02):
guys from that institute, from that lab and see with
whom they talked in the days before Navali was poisoned.
And that's how we.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Found And how do you find that with it?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Well, that's the beauty of this crazy Russian corrupt system.
Because Russia is corrupt and dictatorial. The government wants to
have information on anybody at any given time, so they
gather all this.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Information on you, and that information is for sale.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
That information is for sale because it's correct, because Putting
cannot survive if it doesn't allow his FSB underlinks to
actually make money on selling whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Some of them are vulnerable, some of them are probable,
like you exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
They usually sell this to criminals. And suddenly here come
journalists who are taking a bit of the I've.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Got these voicemails from navalny. How much you want to
give me fifty? Come on, two hundred rubles? Come on,
you're joking.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
But I had this literal conversation with one of the
data traders who likes getting this data from FSB officers
and selling it. And when he found out that we
are actually publishing investigations that he wrote to me this
angry email. He said, I thought, to you, just a criminal,
you're a journalist.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
How dare you?
Speaker 2 (31:02):
So?
Speaker 1 (31:03):
He was so upset.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, so that's it's a crypt system and we exploited
the corruption to get the data.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
You first met Navalny.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Where we first met Navalney in the Black Forest, a
small town called Saint Plasian on the German French Swiss sport.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
And what was necessary describe for us? I mean, you're
a filmmaker and getting people to sit down with you
in front of a camera sometimes that's a pretty herculean
feet Well that's was it easy to get him in
the room or not?
Speaker 4 (31:27):
That's the art of documentary filmmaking is getting in the room,
it's being in the right place right. Well, I think
we had the best shot of anyone in the world.
And the reason that was is we were writing on
the coattails of Christo. Christo came to me one day
and I was there with my producer, Odessa Array, one
of the producers of the film, and Christo and I
were working on another project that wasn't going well. Christo
(31:49):
walks in, he says, there's something else and I was like,
what's that Crystal. He says, you know that navalne guy.
I said yeah. He says, I think I have a
lead and who tried to poison him? And I go,
who's making that movie?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Christo?
Speaker 3 (32:01):
He goes, I don't know? Should I ask?
Speaker 4 (32:02):
I'm like, yeah, you should fucking ask right now. And
because of the work Crystal had done on the screenpole Case,
he had cracked that very famous Russian poisoning story only
a few years earlier. Navollney was receptive and Ivonne understood
that this is the guy to be taken seriously. So
Crystal reached out. A week later, we were sneaking across
the German Austrian border, which is closed because of the COVID.
Where were you at the time we were in Vienna?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
What were you doing there?
Speaker 4 (32:25):
We were in Vienna in limbo, waiting to see if
we could go back to another recruited.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
You into the the NSA when you were you left
scad after You're come on, who recruited you? Come on?
I am? I mean I just had you in Vienna.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
You can't even joke about that. Because the Russians are
gonna take this interview. They're gonna take your voice saying
that to me. They're going to put it on state
media and they're gonna say, look, here's the evidence Alec
Baldwin knows that he.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Works for the same joking Vladimir. Yes, literally, it's too late.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
They're gonna take this and they're no, watch it happen, crosp,
it's gonna happen. You're gonna be on Russian state propaganda
calling me a CIA asset, even.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Though you were.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
This is how these Russians operate. They're like, oh, he
works for the state Department, he works for the stand.
They already said that, and so you joke. But it's
like I'm here being like wo woa, whoa, whoa. They're
going to use your voice calling me a say yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, that was a joke, Vladimir, let's we'll get that
on the cake. You for specifying.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I was in Vienna with Christo and Odessa.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
We were working on another project and in that former
Soviet state, it wasn't going well and I my wife
was spiraling, I was bugging out. I didn't know if
i'd go back to Canada, if I'd stick around for
a little bit longer. And then he walks in and
magnificently says what about navalne And a week later we
were sitting across from Alexa and his chief chief investigator.
I'm Maria Pevcik, and my job was to convince them
(33:40):
why we needed to make a documentary, why we had
to start right now. Chris, So what was your perspective
on that first meeting.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
He wasn't buying it. He was like looking at this
kid much younger. He didn't believe it, but he allowed
to give him a chance. And the way we agreed
with him is let's start rolling. And then we decided
later because otherwise you missing every moment every day not
being recorded, and that's what sold the whole project of Navoni.
And then a week later they were like best of
(34:08):
friends and it was on Google.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Wasn't going on?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
I would say best if I have to as a filmmaker,
I have to just maintain that. You know, Alexey is
an easy guy to hang out with. We bonded over
our wonkish love of politics and all of this, but
it's still important that I maintain a critical eye. This
is a guy who is controversial in his own way,
who's a complicated and compelling figure, and his complications make
him compelling. But he and I hit it off and
(34:32):
we enjoyed spending time together, and I think that's part
of the reason why we were able to mesh ourselves
in his cohort so naturally, so quickly.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Documentary filmmaker Daniel Rohor and Belling Cat journalist Krysto Grotzev.
If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Daniel Rhor and Krystal growth sp recount the dramatic final
(35:04):
moments with Navalni and his family before his heroic return
to Russia. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(35:24):
the Thing. I asked Daniel Rohr and Krystal Grotcev to
speculate on what is next for Putin amidst the rumors
of his ailing health.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
The important thing is that people at the top belief
that he has cancer, and that makes him vulnerable, and
that makes them unlikely to follow any order that he
gives them that endangers their own longevity political longevity. So
this is why Putin is not the sort of all
powerful dictator that he was a year ago.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Everybody knows that he may have cancer. And this is
what matters.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
What do the people inside Russia think? Who's his likely successor?
Is someone teed up Becau's what the Russians is often
a likely successor?
Speaker 2 (36:07):
You know what has been the strongest sort of strategic
talking point of the Kremlin. There's no successor if not
put In them who this is a phrase said phrase,
There's a vacuum there, It's a vacuum. That's why people
have actually not looked for a success and have sort
of embraced his willingness to be the president or that's
are forever. I don't think the people, the regular people
(36:27):
in the near future will decide who the success or is.
It's going to be still the oligarchs and the elite
and the generals. And I wonder if at some point,
because of this war, this egregious war, Navale doesn't become
a more acceptable alternative to the oligarchs because at least
with him, they know that he's going to tax them
thirty percent of their wealth, but they're going to preserve
(36:48):
their lifestyle. And we put In. They've lost everything. They
are not invited to any party in London or in
New York anymore. They can't travel. And this will change
if Navaldi comes to part well, comes.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
To power, I mean if Putin. I mean to take
me through this, because I'm yearning to hear your take
on this, which is that, if let's say theoretically Putin
dropped dead tomorrow, there's no chance in Navalni would become
the president. They're not going to hold an election, are they.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Well, it's going to be chaos and there will be
somebody who comes in as an interim power guy.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
So what is Navalne's path to the presidency? Even post put.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
What's going to happen is a fight, internal domestic fight,
strife among the different groups of the power elite. Putin
has made the only claim to fame that he has.
He has been able to manage these different interests within
the generals and within the FSB, and once he's gone,
it will be a fight everybody against everyone else. And
this is what has happened in every Western, normal country,
(37:45):
that is the normal path to actual democracy, which just
hasn't happened in Russia yet. So I think we're going
to see a couple of years of terrible dictatorship by
somebody else that will gradually go into a real election
at some point.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Why is poison the weapon of choice in these assassinations?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
So the first answer is that if it works, it is,
and it's deniable, you don't discover it. Now in this case,
they discovered it, but it was not meant to be discovered,
So it's just a heart attack, right. And the second
answer is if it doesn't work, then it's so scary
that it actually discourages the cent and it's good. It's
the worst way to die. You hear the shrieks, the
(38:23):
yells of yeah that you don't.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Want to die like that, So we want them to suffer.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
They want yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
So this is the chemical equivalent of dumb dumb bullets exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
But it's not new. It's not something that put An
invented it. He inherited it from the KGB. They love
this thing.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
You may remember sometimes it's untraceable, meaning someone's dead, and
you say, oh, it's a heart.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Attack, right, exactly. There was this Bulgarian journalist who was
killed with a poisoned umbrella. Remember in the seventies, in London.
That's what the KGP did. They prepared this umbrella with
a little pellet that had something like novich Chok and
he died.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
One of my favorite documentaries is Assassins. We were talking
about this before, where the two women believe are coached
because they think they're on a game show and they
killed Kim Jhalon's brother by rubbing the poison in his
eyes at the airport while they're presenting him with some
game show surprise. Anyway, that film Assassins was just absolutely numbing.
But you think, but obviously poison is better than spattering
(39:18):
somebody's head against the wall in a hotel. Well, if
you spattered even with a silencer.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
But the reality is, if you spatter someone's head against
the wall in a hotel, then you have, as as
one of the characters in the film says, a body
with a hole in it, that you have to explain.
If Alexe died on that plane, as the Russian government intended,
an autopsy would have been carried out by the criminalistics Institute.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
The same guys for poison him.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So it's really the perfect crime.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Are either of you, are you worried about your own
safety or were you ever worried about your own safety
during the production of this film.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
When you're sitting next to a standing next to alexeing
of only who's the bravest man on the planet, and
his staff who are actually in danger, you know you
can't help but feel inspired by their courage and bravery.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I think the Russians.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
Will continue to make efforts to discredit the film by
coming after me. That's why I take it so seriously
when we joke about this CIA recruitment stuff, because they
will literally take this and they will put it on
Channel one and they will say, oh, look, here's the evidence.
He's admitting it. He is from this agency or that agency,
which is nonsense. So I'm more concerned about character assassination,
you know, them finding someone I've never met who said
(40:23):
that makes horrible accusations about me, something like that.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
That's my concern. What do you think, Christo, No, I
totally agree with you.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
They will just go after your character. They'll probably send
some nice girls to sleep with you.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
What are you going to work on next? You're going
to do in a documentary about Abba somebody?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
I want to do something that is completely tonally different.
I have a few things in development that I'm apprehensive.
I don't want to jink, so I'm apprehensive to talk about.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
But most documentarians I know have a bunch of pots
on the stone.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, you have to, you have to.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
But this one was so all consuming and it's this
is a daunting one to follow up, as I'm sure
you can imagine. But I want to make something very soon,
and I want it to be totally, totally different. But
I love making documentaries, so I hope I get to
make another one now.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Navalney, what was the last time you were in his presence?
When did you last see.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
I can tell you exactly.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
It was January seventeenth in Berlin, Germany, at about one
thirty in the afternoon of this year of twenty twenty one,
twelve last year he got in. I filmed, I was shooting.
He went to prison when filming on January seventeenth was
the first day he was incarcerat of last year of
twenty twenty one, and I filmed him saying that you
see it in the film. He says goodbye to his colleagues,
and then we walked downstairs to the car park where
(41:34):
there are are cars, protective vehicles waiting for him. He
gets in the car, and I didn't. I was working.
I was shooting, so it's not like I could go
say thank you for so nice to meet you, goodbye.
He understood a line and you have to keep it
absolutely and he understood that, and I understood that. And
as he was driving off, I gave him a nod
and he gave me a nod back, and.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
He was off and you never spoke to him again. No, nothing, nothing. Well,
you've done this amazing job, because you have. Certainly, I'm
not saying this to be kind, and I know I'm
in a long line of people that are saying to you,
what a remarkable and what a talented filmmaker you are.
You's done a remarkable job with this film showing the
world who Navalny is, at least who we want to
(42:13):
believe he is. I'm disappointed that he chose to go
to prison, and although I understand the victor in Casablanca
kind of code, but your film is going to be
for many people in this country their introduction and their
first chance and an up close look at Navalney.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
And that's something that we take very seriously and it's
very important to all of us. As many people in
the world see this film as possible. The reality is
Alec that Alexey is in peril. He is in a
very bad spot right now. And the way that you
keep him alive is by keeping his name in the
global consciousness.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
So is he allowed to have visitors in prison.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
He can see his wife and his daughter once every
three months for an hour. This film is going to
be widely available and everyone in the world needs to
see it, and they need to tell their friends to
see it. Alexei's life depends on it.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Thank you both, Thank you director Daniel Rohrer and journalist
Kristo Grotzev. Navalny is currently in theaters around the world
and will premiere on CNNTV in North America on April
twenty fourth. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
(43:21):
and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperio. I'm Alec Baldwin.
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