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Defiant Navalny has opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine from prison. His team fear for his safety | CNN

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Defiant Navalny has opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine from prison. His team fear for his safety | CNN

Editor’s Be aware: The award-winning CNN Movie “Navalny” airs on CNN this Saturday at 9 p.m. ET. You too can watch now on CNNgo and HBO Max.



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Surviving President Vladimir Putin’s poisoners was only a warm-up, not a warning, for Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny. However his defiance, in line with his political crew, has put him in a race in opposition to time with the Russian autocrat.

The query, in line with Navalny’s chief investigator, Maria Pevchikh, is whether or not he can outlast Putin and his battle in Ukraine – and on that the decision remains to be out. “Up to now, contact wooden, they haven’t gone forward with attempting to kill him once more,” she advised CNN.

On January 17, 2021, undaunted and freshly recovered from an try on his life 5 months earlier – a close to deadly dose of the lethal nerve agent Novichok delivered by Putin’s henchmen – Navalny boldly boarded a flight taking him proper again into the Kremlin’s fingers.

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By then, Navalny had grow to be Putin’s nemesis. So sturdy is the Russian chief’s aversion to his challenger that even to this present day he refuses to say his title.

As Navalny stepped off the flight from Berlin onto the frigid tarmac at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport that snowy night, he knew precisely what he was entering into. Simply weeks earlier than leaving Germany, he advised CNN: “I perceive that Putin hates me, I perceive that individuals within the Kremlin are able to kill.”

Navalny’s path to understanding had come at a excessive value. He knew in intimate and excruciating element precisely how shut he had come to demise by the hands of Putin’s poisoners whereas on the political marketing campaign path in Siberia to help native candidates.

As he recovered in Berlin from the August 2020 assassination try, Navalny and his crack analysis crew – performing on some inventive sleuthing by investigative outfit Bellingcat and CNN – discovered who his would-be killers had been and found they’d been tailing him on Putin’s orders for over three years.

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So detailed was Navalny’s information that, posing as an official with Russia’s Nationwide Safety Council, he was capable of name one of many would-be killers, who promptly confessed to lacing Navalny’s underwear with the banned nerve agent Novichok.

The safety service agent, one of a giant crew from the dreaded FSB, the Soviet KGB’s trendy alternative, even provided a critique of their failed homicide bid. He advised Navalny he’d survived solely as a result of the aircraft carrying him diverted for medical assist when he turned sick, and prompt that the assassination try might need succeeded on an extended flight.

When challenged face-to-face on the door of his Moscow house by CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who together with journalists from Der Spiegel and The Insider had additionally helped within the investigation, the agent swiftly shut himself inside. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement within the try on Navalny’s life.

Alexey Navalny, his wife Yulia, opposition politician Lyubov Sobol and other demonstrators march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow on February 29, 2020.

When Putin was requested if he’d tried to have Navalny killed, he smirked, saying: “If there was such a want, it will have been finished.”

Regardless of his denials, Putin’s want was clear: Navalny’s magnetism was positioning him because the Russian chief’s largest political risk.

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In the present day he’s the best-known anti-Putin politician in Russia and is placing his life on the road to interrupt Putin’s stranglehold over Russians.

Navalny’s crew, who’re in self-imposed exile for his or her security, consider their boss is in a race for survival in opposition to Putin.

Pevchikh, who heads Navalny’s investigative crew and helped winkle out his would-be assassins, says the battle in Ukraine – which Navalny has condemned from his jail cell behind bars – will carry Putin down. The query, she says, is whether or not Navalny can survive Putin. “It’s a little bit of a race. , at this level, who lasts longer?”

A photograph taken on June 23, 2022 shows the IK-6 penal colony to which Alexey Navalny was transferred near the village of Melekhovo, in Vladimir region.

Navalny’s nearly quick incarceration after touchdown from Germany and his subsequent detention in one in every of Russia’s most harmful jails prisons – he was moved in June to a maximum-security jail facility in Melekhovo, within the Vladimir area – is not any shock.

What’s exceptional is that regardless of each bodily and psychological blow Putin’s brutal penal regime has dealt him, Navalny nonetheless refuses to be silenced.

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Even whereas behind bars, his Instagram and Twitter accounts sustain his assaults on Putin. “He passes a whole bunch of notes and we sort them up,” Pevchikh says. She didn’t specify how the notes had been relayed.

But it surely’s not with out value: With each trumped-up flip of Putin’s tortuous authorized machinations, Navalny has needed to battle for even fundamental rights like boots and drugs. His well being has suffered, he has misplaced weight.

His daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, at present finding out at Stanford College in California, advised CNN he’s being systematically singled out for harsh therapy.

Jail authorities are repeatedly biking him out and in of solitary confinement, she says. “They put him in for every week, then take him out for sooner or later,” to attempt to break him, she mentioned. “Persons are not allowed to speak with him, and this type of isolation is absolutely purely psychological torture.”

His bodily therapy, she mentioned, is simply as horrendous. “It’s a small cell, six (or) seven-by-eight ft… a cage for somebody who’s of his six-foot-three peak,” she advised CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “He solely has one iron stool, which is sewed to the ground. And out of non-public possessions he’s allowed to have: a mug, a toothbrush, and one e book.”

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Up to now few days, Navalny’s lawyer has mentioned he has a “temperature, fever and a cough.” He hasn’t seen a physician but and his crew is struggling to get drugs to him in his isolation cell.

Yulia Navalnaya leaves the IK-2 male correctional facility after a court hearing, in the town of Pokrov in Vladimir Region, Russia, on February 15, 2022.

His spouse Yulia, who says she acquired a letter from Navalny on Wednesday, has additionally raised considerations about his well being. She says he has been sick for over every week, and that he’s not getting therapy and is pressured off his sick mattress in the course of the day.

Not less than 531 Russian medical doctors as of Wednesday had signed an open letter addressed to Putin to demand that Navalny needs to be supplied with essential medical help, in line with the Fb put up the place the letter was printed.

His household haven’t seen him since Might final 12 months and his daughter fears what might come subsequent. “This is without doubt one of the most harmful and well-known excessive safety prisons in Russia identified for torturing and murdering the inmates,” she mentioned.

In his final moments of freedom as police grabbed him at Sheremetyevo airport on his return to Russia practically two years in the past, Navalny kissed his spouse Yulia goodbye.

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Outdoors, riot police beat again the crowds who’d come to welcome them dwelling. It was the start of a brand new chapter in Navalny’s wrestle, one he’s conscious he might not survive.

Earlier than leaving Germany, he’d recorded a message about what to do if the worst occurred: “My message for the scenario when I’m killed could be very easy: not quit… The one factor essential for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”

When Navalny appeared in a Moscow courtroom after his arrest on the airport, the massive scale of his issues was simply starting to grow to be obvious. He was defiant; lower off from the world inside a cage within the crowded courtroom, he signaled his like to his spouse simply yards away within the tiny room.

The trial itself was a farce. He was handed a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for allegedly breaking the phrases of his probation in an previous, politically motivated case.

The courtroom theater was a sometimes Putinesque twist of Russia’s simply manipulated judicial course of. Navalny’s alleged probation violation got here as he lay incapacitated within the Berlin hospital recovering from the Novichok poisoning he and Western officers blame on the Kremlin.

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If the courtroom course of in Putin’s Russia was a surreal circus, jail was to be its brutal twin the place the Russian chief hoped to interrupt Navalny’s will.

Journalists watch a live broadcast of the court hearing from the press room of the penal colony N2, on the first day of a new trial of Alexey Navalny, in the town of Pokrov on February 15, 2022.

However removed from defeated, and a lawyer by coaching, Navalny fought for his fundamental jail rights via authorized challenges.

After his sentencing, Navalny went on a starvation strike, complaining he was being disadvantaged of sleep by jail guards who stored waking him up. He started struggling well being points and demanded correct medical consideration.

Towards a backdrop of worldwide outrage, Navalny was moved to a jail hospital; in the meantime Moscow’s courts moved to have him declared a terrorist or extremist and Putin shut down his political operations throughout the nation.

In January 2022 Navalny appealed this designation, however after one other six months of judicial theater he misplaced.

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And there have been extra costs. In March that 12 months, he was convicted of but extra trumped-up costs – contempt of courtroom and embezzlement – and he was transferred to Melekhovo’s most safety penal colony IK-6, a whole bunch of miles from Moscow.

At each flip, Navalny fought again, threatening in November 2022 to sue jail authorities for withholding winter boots, and, most not too long ago, mounting a authorized problem to know what jail medics have been injecting him with.

Putin’s efforts to interrupt him don’t have any bounds, Navalny has mentioned, describing his months in a punitive punishment cell as an try to “shut me up.” Typically, he has been made to share the tiny house with a convict who has severe hygiene points, he mentioned on Twitter.

Navalny says he noticed it for what it was: Putin’s callous use of individuals. “What particularly infuriates me is the instrumentalization of a residing particular person, turning him right into a strain software,” he mentioned.

However his struggling is paying off, in line with Pevechikh. “We’ve got had a really profitable 12 months by way of our group,” she mentioned. “We at the moment are one of the vital loud, anti-war, anti-war media that there’s out there.”

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It’s the very fact Navalny returned to Russia that persuades folks he’s real, she mentioned. “The extent of threat that he takes on himself personally… could be very spectacular,” she mentioned. “And I might think about that our viewers recognises that.”

Dasha and Yulia Navalnaya attend the premiere of the film

Maybe due to this, however actually regardless of the greater than 700 days in jail, the place he stays topic to Putin’s vindictive whims, Navalny’s spirit appears sturdy.

At New 12 months he made mild of his inhumane therapy, saying on Instagram that he had put up Christmas decorations he’d been despatched in a letter from his household. When the guards took them down, he mentioned, “the temper remained.”

His crew posted a poignant photoshopped image of him along with his household – a means of holding alive their New 12 months custom of being collectively – and quoted Navalny as saying: “I can really feel the threads and wires going to my spouse, kids, dad and mom, brother, all of the folks closest to me.”

His New 12 months message to his many supporters is each stark and honest: “Thanks all a lot in your help this 12 months. It hasn’t stopped for a minute, not even for a second, and I’ve felt it.”

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For what darkish horrors Putin might but select to go to on him, even the resilient Navalny will want all of the help he can get.

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Saying ‘No’ to Musk

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Saying ‘No’ to Musk

They have laid off their own workers. They have reshuffled their departments’ priorities. They have taken aim at D.E.I.

But, after weeks of walking in lock step with the White House, some cabinet officials and other high-level Trump appointees have balked at a directive from Elon Musk.

The episode — which began on Saturday with a demand by Musk, posted on X, that federal employees either sum up a week’s worth of their accomplishments by email or resign — morphed into a rare display of defiance in the highest ranks of the administration. And it became something of an effort to rein in Musk’s power in real time.

Senior officials at the State Department, the F.B.I., the Energy Department and other agencies told their employees to hold off on responding to Musk’s message. Some of the agencies refusing to comply are run by close Trump allies like Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and Pam Bondi.

Those officials didn’t specifically confront Musk. A note that went to some employees at the Justice Department said they should ignore the request “due to the confidential and sensitive nature of the department’s work,” according to an email obtained by my colleague Cecilia Kang.

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And the spat over an email is far less intense than the dissent from some rank-and-file workers that my colleagues Nicholas Nehamas, Ryan Mac and Nikole Hannah-Jones covered over the weekend.

But inherent in those agency leaders’ refusal to comply was a clear message: My agency reports to me, not to Elon Musk.

Trump, who sometimes encourages his advisers to duke it out in public, has done little to settle the matter. He praised Musk’s message today, and said employees who don’t answer would be “sort of semi-fired, or you’re fired.” But around the same time, my colleague Michael Shear wrote, the Office of Personnel Management told agencies that responding to the email is now voluntary.

Is that clear?

As we’ve noted before, Musk has been benefiting from the confusing, amorphous nature of his role. He was not confirmed by the Senate and he has no job description. It is not clear whether or not he will attend Trump’s first cabinet meeting, which is scheduled for Wednesday.

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But the internal resistance to his message suggests there is at least some willingness among cabinet members to define his role by saying what he can’t do.

  • Elon Musk personally called the leader of the hard-right Alternative for Germany party to congratulate her on the party’s gains in last weekend’s election — but she slept through the call.

  • Some of the voters flooding Republicans’ town halls to complain about the Trump administration’s early moves are specifically citing Musk.

  • Meanwhile, he lost a battle in the fight over access to government data. A federal judge barred his team from student loan databases.

  • And it is not just a court throwing up roadblocks. After Musk told federal workers to send an email explaining their work or resign, several members of President Trump’s cabinet told their employees to ignore it. We’ve got more on the confusion and division below.


MEANWHILE on X

Musk’s X feed suggests he is feeling the pushback. My colleague Kate Conger explains.

On Monday, Musk shared posts that pointed to a poll showing Americans broadly support a “full-scale effort” to eliminate waste and fraud in government.

Musk claimed this was an endorsement of his work: “Polls show that @DOGE is overwhelmingly POPULAR and that government spending should be reduced by at least $1 trillion!!” he wrote.

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Polls that ask specifically about Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, however, are far more mixed.

Musk also tried to brush off his controversial missive to workers across the federal government as overblown. “Absurd that a 5 min email generates this level of concern!,” he posted, along with a video featuring Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman, talking about slashing the ranks of the federal government.

Musk also seemed concerned with showing off his support from the one voter who matters most: Trump. He shared clips from today’s news conference, in which the president praised Musk’s work.

“Great President,” Musk wrote in response.

Kate Conger

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AGENCY STATUS REPORT

On Friday, we told you about layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration that set back the agency’s recent efforts to keep up with medical technology. My colleague Christina Jewett reports that many of those specialized workers — people involved in food safety, review of medical devices and other areas — have already been reinstated.

It’s unclear why F.D.A. officials reversed themselves. Christina notes the layoffs may not have saved the government much money. Several of the employees’ salaries are funded by fees companies pay the F.D.A., not taxpayers.

  • Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts warned the commerce secretary that Musk’s team could gain access to trade secrets and other data from his competitors held by the department.

  • A fake video of Musk and Trump appeared on televisions at the federal housing agency this morning as employees there returned to the office full time.


the partnership that wasn’t

When the idea for the Department of Government Efficiency was born, it was supposed to be a buddy movie starring two entrepreneurs: Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman and former long-shot presidential candidate.

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Ramaswamy rankled Trump after publicly clashing with some of his supporters over immigration, and he saw himself out of the federal government and set about planning to run for governor in Ohio, which he officially announced tonight.

It’s difficult now to imagine Musk sharing the spotlight. And the buddy movie playing on repeat in Washington is, of course, about Musk and Trump.

Ramaswamy’s ties to Trump have given him a leg up in the race, my colleague Charles Homans recently reported. But his campaign could turn on the question of whether or not Trump — and maybe Musk — endorses him.


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EU and UK in talks about Europe-wide defence funding amid fear of US pullback

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EU and UK in talks about Europe-wide defence funding amid fear of US pullback

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Britain will this week join EU leaders in groundbreaking talks about setting up Europe-wide defence funding arrangements, as the continent struggles to beef up its military amid fears of a disappearing US security blanket.

UK chancellor Rachel Reeves will hold talks with other European finance ministers at a G20 meeting in Cape Town this week, as the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year.

“It could be a fund or a bank. For example, there is the concept of the Rearmament Bank, which we are also considering,” Polish finance minister Andrzej Domanski said.

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Domanski told the Financial Times that discussions had been taking place with the UK for months, adding: “Without Great Britain, the defence of Europe is difficult to imagine.”

The UK Treasury confirmed that Reeves would “raise defence financing proposals with her European counterparts” at the G20, but said talks were at an early stage.

Donald Trump has demanded European Nato allies increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, from an existing 2 per cent target that some still do not reach, or risk losing US protection. 

The US president’s rapid re-engagement with Russia, a country that most European countries see as an existential threat, has sparked frantic discussions on how to collectively bolster Europe’s defensive capabilities and reduce reliance on American troops and weapons.

Friedrich Merz speaking on Sunday © Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

On Sunday Germany’s incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that Germany had to fundamentally remake its security arrangements and end a decades-long reliance on Washington, saying Trump was “largely indifferent” to Europe’s fate and the continent needed to “achieve independence”.

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Collective European defence spending was broadly discussed during a call this weekend between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and a separate call between von der Leyen and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, according to a person briefed on the discussions. 

European countries are looking for ways to increase defence capabilities at a time of tightly constrained national budgets. By leveraging national guarantees, a bank would allow countries to boost spending without increasing their balance sheets upfront.

The UK is seeking ways of increasing defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent, costing at least £5bn extra a year, when its ability to boost outlays is heavily constrained by its self-imposed fiscal rules. 

General Sir Nick Carter
General Sir Nick Carter served as Chief of the UK Defence Staff from June 2018 to November 2021 © Andrew Matthews/PA

Among the proposals is one from General Sir Nick Carter, former head of the British military, who has suggested a “rearmament bank” to tap into Europe’s savings pool, modelled on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — the lender set up after the fall of the Iron Curtain to support central and eastern Europe. 

“The Treasury is interested in it,” said one person involved in discussions with Reeves’ team. However, Treasury officials said there were many models of multilateral financing on the table and that Reeves had an open mind on the next steps.

Experts said a benefit for Reeves of Carter’s “rearmament bank” was that it would mitigate the impact of extra defence spending on the fiscal rules.

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Andy King, a former UK official who is now at Flint Global, a consultancy, said such a bank had the potential to raise “significant resources for defence without materially impacting the fiscal rules”. He added: “That’s not a certain outcome: the detail would matter in terms of how the entity was structured and how it used its lending capacity.”

The EU leaders meeting in late March will discuss common defence needs, and Poland’s goal would be to make progress on the funding needs at an EU finance ministers gathering in April, ahead of a decision by leaders in June. 

The European Commission said this month it would partially lift EU fiscal rules to allow countries to invest in defence, a move that would allow countries to borrow without incurring sanctions.

Von der Leyen has also opened the door to “common European financing” on common defence projects, and is expected to detail funding options in March.

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DHS memo lays out plans to detain migrants at Fort Bliss and other U.S. bases

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DHS memo lays out plans to detain migrants at Fort Bliss and other U.S. bases

An immigrant prepares to board a military removal flight last month at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas.

U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena/U.S. Department of Defense via Getty Images


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U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena/U.S. Department of Defense via Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is developing plans to build immigration detention facilities on U.S. military bases around the country, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR.

The Department of Homeland Security is asking the Department of Defense for help detaining immigrants without legal status, according to the DHS memo, a step that could significantly expand the military’s role in immigration enforcement.

The memo sent earlier this month from Juliana Blackwell, the acting executive secretary at DHS, lays out a plan to use Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, to “stage detainees for removal from the United States.”

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The request is still in the planning stages, according to a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly. But if activated, the plan could dramatically expand detention capacity to support President Trump’s push for mass deportations.

Fort Bliss would initially detain up to 1,000 immigrants during a 60-day evaluation period, the memo states, and could eventually hold as many as 10,000 immigrants while serving as a “central hub for deportation operations.”

Fort Bliss could then serve as the model for as many as 10 other holding facilities on military bases nationwide, including Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey; Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station near Buffalo, N.Y.; Hill Air Force Base in Utah; and Homestead Air Reserve Base near Miami.

There is some precedent for using U.S. military bases to house immigrants. The Biden administration stood up a temporary shelter for unaccompanied migrant children at Fort Bliss, and also housed tens of thousands of Afghans at military bases in Wisconsin, New Jersey and elsewhere after the fall of Kabul.

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On Friday, the Trump administration removed the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid dissatisfaction with the pace of arrests and deportations.

A lack of detention space may be one obstacle. ICE’s existing detention facilities are at full capacity, with more than 41,000 immigrants in custody, according to the most recent data from DHS.

At a White House press briefing last week, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pledged to use “every element and instrument of national power” to accelerate deportations of immigrants with criminal convictions and final orders of removal.

“We are shortly on the verge of achieving a pace and speed of deportations this country has never before seen,” Miller said.

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