Is Tucker Carlson still in Moscow? When the news broke that Russia’s, and perhaps the world’s, most famous political prisoner, Alexei Navalny, had died in a Siberian prison, he relaxed in a cafe with FSB agents, savoring delicious pierogi and listening to their jokes. I wonder if they spent their time laughing. He is 47 years old.
A week after his horrifying interview with President Vladimir Putin, Carlson was on a guided tour of Moscow’s brightest sights. In a video posted on his website, he marvels at the Kievskaya metro station (“no graffiti, no filth, no rapists, no people waiting to push you onto the tracks… it’s better than anything in our country”). , I go shopping at the grocery store with my jaw slack. (He finds himself “radicalized” against American leaders because food prices are so low) and praises the Russian capital’s “clean and safe streets.”
Until Friday, these videos seemed just plain creepy, the work of naive journalists who seem surprisingly unaware of the long history of selective displays of Soviet grandeur by gullible Westerners. . Yes, the subway station is great. I wonder if Carlson knows that they were dug by slave labor and designed by British engineers, some of whom Stalin imprisoned on charges of espionage. Some of the gorgeous marble came from the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which Stalin blew up in 1931? Indeed, like most facilities in authoritarian states, the platforms are safe and clean, as are the roads, but he said the facial recognition sensors that led to the arrests of dozens of protesters on the platforms Did you know that the food in the stores he visited was one-fourth the price of American food, but still expensive for a typical Russian who earns one-sixth of the average American? Too much. Even so, if Karlsson had set foot outside the center of Moscow, much less in the heart of the country, he would have been little awed.
But today, after Navalny’s death, Karlsson’s praise for Putin’s Moscow looks even more evasive. Navalny, the last serious opposition leader and the only Russian who was able to coerce tens of thousands of anti-Putin demonstrators into the streets, is a great martyr of modern Russian democracy. will be recorded in the history books. Mr. Carlson will rival Walter Duranty, the 1930s New York Times reporter who, for as long as anyone can remember, covered up Stalin’s crimes and glorified the murderous dictator as a great leader. – Mr. Duranty’s actions were intentional and ideologically driven, whereas Carlson is just a clumsy kid. (Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, something Carlson never dreamed of; the Times’ denial of the award in 2003 was better late than never.)
At the end of his embarrassing interview with President Putin (which even the Russian president later denied, saying the questions were “too soft”), Mr. Carlson at least asked Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is now in a Russian prison. I asked him about his fate. He was prosecuted for almost a year on trumped-up charges of espionage. But this appeared to be just a prelude to Mr. Carlson’s request to take Evan home, a request that Mr. Putin rejected. But was Carlson asking about Paul Whelan, another American who was wrongly detained? Did he ask about Mr. Navalny? (The interview, which appears unedited, does not include such questions.)
It remains to be seen whether Navalny was killed outright, along with other Putin critics such as former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, double agent Sergei Skripal, human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, and Chechnya. It is unknown and may never be known. War critic Sergei Yushenkov. In any case, Navalny died in one of Putin’s most remote prisons as a result of poor conditions in other prisons where he was held as a result of dissent to Putin’s rule.
In other words, Mr. Navalny must be added to the list of Russian nationals who have died in clashes with the man who has inspired the most ardent admiration of Mr. Tucker Carlson.
Navalny began his rise as an opposition leader in 2011, widely publicizing his campaign against corruption in the Kremlin’s elite. In 2013, while running for mayor of Moscow, he was arrested on false charges of embezzlement. Still, he took second place. He tried to run for president in 2018, but President Putin banned him from running. In 2020, he was poisoned on a plane to Siberia where he was scheduled to meet other opposition politicians. (Mr. Navalny then found evidence that Putin’s products had administered a near-lethal toxin through a series of prank calls recorded in a fascinating HBO documentary about his own life.) )
He traveled to Germany for further treatment, but returned to Moscow in 2021. Some were surprised by his return, finding it courageous but self-destructive. Certainly he knew he was going to be arrested – and indeed he was upon arriving at the airport. He may have thought that his sentence in his own prison would not last long, that his supporters would rally and that Putin would succumb to international pressure. None of that was true. Instead, he was indicted on steadily more serious charges — new embezzlement, then contempt of court, and finally “extremism” charges. He had several illnesses, some of which were caused by deliberate contact with fellow inmates who had contagious diseases. In December, he was deported to a penal colony in the Arctic Circle. He continued to meet with his attorney and continued to send his usual witty and uplifting messages to his followers. Just this week, he appeared healthy in a video appealing his 19-year sentence. On Friday morning, Russia’s Interfax news agency announced that he had died after collapsing while taking a walk.
World leaders mourned Putin’s death and said they would hold him accountable. Garry Kasparov, a Russian exile, former chess champion, and prominent human rights activist, tweeted Friday morning, “Is Tucker still in Moscow?”He would be surprised at the cheapness of human life under Putin’s regime. Russia. “