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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to AMANPOUR AND COMPANY. Here’s what’s coming up.
Donald Trump back on the campaign trail after his court appearance. How voters are reacting to this most serious indictment with political
strategist, Sarah Longwell.
Then, as the anniversary of a gruesome death approaches in Iran, we look at a new documentary on Mahsa Amini and Iran’s protest movement with producer,
Sasha Joelle Achilli, and “The New York Times” journalist, Farnaz Fassihi.
And what the Russian state trial says about dissident Alexei Navalny.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I’m Christiane Amanpour in London.
Fresh from the courtroom and back on the campaign trail. Donald Trump, whose campaign is being drained by his legal fees attends a fundraising
dinner in Alabama tonight and visits South Carolina on Saturday. All of this after unprecedented allegations against a U.S. president, a day after
pleading not guilty to four federal counts contained in a 45-page indictment. The most serious against him yet. Essentially, he is accused of
a conspiracy to defraud the United States with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
CNN reports the president to be in a sour, dark mood since that indictment. And there’s more to come, reportedly, in the State of Georgia, where he
demanded election officials “find him thousands more votes.” And yet, he is still, by a long shot, way ahead of the entire field in the Republican
primary.
My first guest has her finger on the pulse of the grand old party. Sarah Longwell is a former Republican strategist. And now, she is the founder of
the Republican Accountability Project. Sarah Longwell, welcome to the program.
SARAH LONGWELL, FOUNDER, THE REPUBLICAN ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT: Thanks for having me.
AMANPOUR: So, here we have, I mean, literally scores of felony charges against the president, including this most serious of the major indictments
against him. You basically poll and examine Republican voters. Are they able to separate the — you know, the wheat from the chaff? Are they able
to make sense of this?
LONGWELL: They are not. Yes. So, I talked two-time Trump voters almost every week, and I just talked to them this week, just before the indictment
came out, but we knew it was coming. And so, we asked, you know, will this one makes a difference? This one, where Trump, you know, incited an
insurrection, where he didn’t engage in a peaceful transfer of power? And people expressed a kind of, you know, A, they said, we just don’t care.
Lots of people said they just don’t care, they just see it as another attempt to get Trump, the indictments, they can’t really tell them apart.
A lot of these two-time Trump voters have made up their mind a long time ago about the insurrection and Trump’s culpability, which is that they
don’t think it was his fault. They sort of range somewhere between saying, you know, that is the fault of the people who went in that day, to, well,
that was bad, but what about, you know, the Black Lives Matter protests? All the way down to, that was a false flag operation meant to make
Republicans look bad.
And so, unfortunately — and this is the reason Trump is still so dominant in the polls, is that so much of his base just thinks that every indictment
is more evidence that the establishment and the deep state are scared of Trump because he is the most effective person and they want to take him
down.
AMANPOUR: So, did they actually read these indictments? I mean, or does it not matter? I mean, the language and the accusations and the — you know,
all the information that’s being brought to bear in these indictments, including from certain Republican corridors, certain, you know, people who
used to be pro-Trump, you know, discussing all of this kind of evidence against him, do they not read it?
LONGWELL: They certainly do not read it. I mean, one of the things that I have realized talking to Trump voters for so long is how much they live in
an entirely different information ecosystem. There is a right-wing sort of infotainment media ecosystem that is there to tell them that Donald Trump
did nothing wrong, that this is just people out to get him. And the fact is, you know, you can see why these voters believe them, because it’s not
just Steve Bannon, it’s also Tim Scott, it’s also the people running against Donald Trump and the Republican primary, his opposition.
When people who are running against him are saying things like, you know, we’ve got to get rid of this two-tiered justice system, this is the
weaponization of government against a political rival, and it comes from, you are right that there’s people like Bill Barr who are out there saying
that this indictment is a good indictment, but there’s a lot of other “sort of normal Republicans” who toe the line that this is an attack on Donald
Trump and a weaponization of the justice system. And so, that’s what voters believe. And it’s kind of a loop of information, where they’re all sort of
reinforcing that idea to each other.
AMANPOUR: So, what do you think is going to happen then if there’s this — and I’ll get back to the legal issue, but you are, you know, a political
strategist and obviously a former Republican, and you have, for a long time, tried to figure out where the Republican Party is, and you are
clearly not a Trump supporter. So, what can and will any one of the competitors seek to tell a different story at some point to sort of peel
away from the Trump narrative?
LONGWELL: Yes. So, here’s what’s really interesting. After 2022, the elections, where Donald Trump sort of flamed out spectacularly in terms of
the people that he had put forward, there was a real — in the focus groups, you know, people were really ready to move on from Trump. There was
a kind of sense that he had too much baggage, he was kind of —
AMANPOUR: Yes.
LONGWELL: He had, you know, lost a step. But then something shifted, not only was Trump indicted, and people had this kind of rally around Trump
effect, the other thing that happened was the main person that people wanted to move on to was Ron DeSantis. And as voters started to look closer
at him, they just kind of soured on him. They didn’t — they don’t dislike him. They think he’s fine. I hear a lot of people say that he’s fine. But
they’re not that enthusiastic about him or any other challenger.
And I think, like, you can’t beat something with nothing. Like one of these people who are running against Donald Trump need to sort of capture the
imagination of Republican primary voters. And because nobody is showing sort of the sufficient political talent or charisma, and they’ve all kind
of internalized so much of Trump’s messaging and they’re so afraid of his voters that they all end up sounding sort of like a knockoff, bargain
basement version of Trump, and voters aren’t going to want that when they have access to the real thing.
And so, I think that’s the dynamic we’re seeing. People just aren’t taking him on. And so, there’s nobody who can really go toe to toe with him.
AMANPOUR: Just interesting about DeSantis, because you’re right, the whole political class basically said, whoa, you know, DeSantis, you’re just going
to see what he’s going to do. You know, he’s going to be, you know, Trump but a smarter Trump, a Trump who can win. And as you could say, at the
moment, it looks like he’s kind of crumbling.
However, polling today shows that he is doing a bit better in Iowa than nationally, although he’s still behind Trump. What do you — how do you
account for that? Is it just because he’s not standing up and actually separating himself from being a mini-me, as you just said?
LONGWELL: Yes. I mean, look. I think it goes back to this question of political talent. When I was doing a focus group this week one of the
things that really stunned me — and there were Iowa voters in this group – – was we said, look, if it’s not Trump, who else are you interested in? And people said — some people said Tim Scott. They liked him. There are a few
South Carolina people in the group too. We were during the early states. A couple people said Vivek Ramaswamy. And nobody said Ron DeSantis, which was
the first time that’s ever happened.
Ron DeSantis is usually the first alternative people go to, and I think it’s because when people are kind of meeting him, we’re seeing him on TV
now, they are just not finding that he is like that great. They think the Disney thing is kind of weird, the woke stuff gets a little boring.
I will say though, the Iowa piece is incredibly important. And there is only one path, really, to defeating Donald Trump, and there is a Trump —
or, I’m sorry, there is a chunk of primary voters who are interested in moving on from him. And so, Ron DeSantis or somebody has to work on
consolidating those voters and then moving into the people that are — you know, they like Trump, but they’re open to somebody else. And I think Iowa
is a good place to do it. There’s a lot of evangelical voters there. I’ve done several focused groups in Iowa, and Trump still has a lot of traction.
But because it’s a caucus, there is an opportunity for a quick dynamic shift.
If people in Iowa went to somebody else, that could really shake up the race. But somebody is going to have to breakthrough in a bigger way, and
that’s going to mean, you know, having a really — I think Tim Scott gets closer to this, but even he feels like he is running for vice president. I
mean, yes, somebody is going to have to take on Trump really hard. And they can’t do it by saying Trump was terrible. I think that’s clear. But they
can kind of gold watch him. They can say, Trump was a great president, but he can’t take us forward. I’m the one who can take us forward. I am the one
who can win.
But I’ll tell you another thing about DeSantis, which one of the — you brought this up, that people really thought he was Trump without the
baggage, that he was electable, and that that was one of the things they really liked about him. But because Ron DeSantis has run so far to the
right or to the extreme, on so many issues, including abortion, now Trump is actually seen as more electable than Ron DeSantis by most Republican
voters.
And so, Ron DeSantis, by trying to out-Trump Trump, really undermine sort of the central thesis of his campaign, which that he — which was that he
was a more electable alternative.
AMANPOUR: That’s really interesting. But can I ask you, because, obviously, money is a big part of any election in the United States. And
although Trump is hauling in, you know, huge donations, lots of reports say that he’s also running through that money, mostly for the legal process
that he is — you know, he is involved in. And his pack say America spent, you know, more than $40 million on legal fees. Some of them are in
financial trouble. Being asked for refunds in the tens of millions.
Chris Christie, who is currently in Ukraine, I guess, trying to burnish his foreign policy credentials and have himself stand apart from DeSantis as a
grown-up on foreign policy, he is trying to use the financial situation to attack Trump. Just take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: All those people we now know have paid over $40 million of their hard-
earned money for a billionaire’s legal fees. He is not enough of a stand-up person with his wealth and his big private 737 plane, and all the rest that
he has in Mar-a-Lago, and the Trump Tower and all the rest, and he’s making regular Americans pay his legal fees.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, that’s a pretty effective message because Trump always says he is for the regular American. Will that cut through, do you think?
LONGWELL: I don’t think so, not this committed voters. I mean, they know there have been — you know, we’ve just been down this road so many times
before, for eight years, you know, he’s had scandals through the Trump organization, ways that he’s used money, the whole stop the steal campaign
where he raised hundreds of millions of dollars on the lie, that was for his legal fees and everybody knew it. And so, I don’t think that that’s
going to make the ultimate difference.
I will — I do want to say that I think what Chris Christie has been doing, if the entire field were acting like Chris Christie and going at Trump and
making these arguments, there’d be less of this collective action problem, right? I mean, Chris Christie is — he’s not going to endear himself, he’s
not going to win a Republican primary by, you know, talking about Trump all the time, because base voters don’t like it. But if they were all doing it,
and they were all getting this message through, and they were all acting that strong, there would be a much better chance of Trump actually taking
some real hits.
The problem with Chris Christie is that Republican primary voters have made up their mind about him a long time ago.
AMANPOUR: Right. And made up their mind probably about Trump a long time ago as well. And we’ll see how that plays out in the general. So, let me
ask you then. If — you know, it is said and “The New York Times” said today, that eventually, it will be the American voters who decide Trump’s
fate, whether it’s politically or legally.
One of Trump’s lawyers, the ones who — you know, who moved away, citing various differences with his team, have said one of the — you know, if he
— if it was him, he would say, you know, that Trump didn’t know the full extent of the fact that there was no fraud. You know, he truly believed it.
He would question the Justice Department and say, well, did you actually study, you know, to find — to try to prove a negative that there was no
fraud? Is that going to be effective, do you think, in court?
LONGWELL: I don’t know. I mean, look, I’m not a lawyer but I sat through all of this January 6th Committee hearings. And the case that they made,
witness after witness — and by the way, these witnesses were Republicans who worked for Donald Trump, primarily, they were very clear that people
were telling him this is wrong. It was not stolen. I mean, you can listen to the call that he has with Brad Raffensperger.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
LONGWELL: And Brad Raffensperger very clearly tells him there was no fraud. His — the Republican, you know, secretary of state was just, there
was no fraud. And so, lots of people were telling Trump that.
Now, the question of whether or not, you know, he chose to believe the Sydney Powells and the Rudy Giulianis and that he truly believed that, I
don’t know. I think that’s probably the one complicating factor in this case. But the evidence — and I think Bill Barr. You know, Bill Barr has
taken a different line than some in the Republican media who wanted to defend Trump on these grounds, and Bill Barr is saying he knew, and this is
a clean indictment and I think this is strong. And so, you know, Bill Barr is not a friend of the left. And I think that if he thinks that this is a
good indictment, it probably is.
AMANPOUR: Really interesting. Of course, he was the attorney general. Sarah Longwell, thank you so much, indeed.
LONGWELL: Thanks for having me.
AMANPOUR: And next to Iran where a draconian new law is being considered by the authorities. It would stiffen the already harsh punishments for
women who don’t wear her hijab, and even use A.I. to identify them. This comes as the first anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini approaches. She
was the 22-year-old woman who died after being detained by Iran’s notorious Morality Police, triggering mass demonstrations across the country.
A new PBS documentary is taking a closer look at just what happened at that time. Here’s the trailer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unprecedented protests across Iran.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eyewitness accounts and footage from inside the historic protests. The women defying the regime, and the violent crackdown.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: I’m joined now by the film’s producer, Sasha Joelle Achilli, and also by Iranian American journalist, Farnaz Fassihi, who has been covering
that country for years and chronicles this movement for “The New York Times.” Welcome to you both.
Joelle, let me first ask you — Sasha, rather, let me first ask you about what made you have to produce this documentary, how you did it? Because you
didn’t actually go to Iran. How did you get all the elements?
SASHA JOELLE ACHILLI, PRODUCER, FRONTLINE’S “INSIDE THE IRANIAN UPRISING”: So, I had, quite a few years ago, made a film — worked on a film about the
White Ones Day Movement, it was 2018 and some women had to remove their hijabs in public and had been arrested.
And so, I kind of, you know, followed the events in Iran closely. And when Mahsa was killed, I was trying to figure out how we could tell a story
about what was going on. And obviously, as you know, it’s really hard for foreign reporters to go to Iran and to work there. But the extraordinary
thing was that Iranian citizens themselves were filming the events and posting what they were witnessing online.
And I got in touch with a friend and colleague, filmmaker, Majed Neisi. And I said, Majed, you know, what are you doing? How — what do — how do you
think, you know, there could be a film about what’s going on? And he said, Sasha, you know, since Mahsa was killed, every night for 12 hours I have
been sitting and watching everything that’s been uploaded and I’m downloading it and archiving it.
And so, by the time he and I spoke, he had already archived, you know, over 70 to 80 hours of footage, which was pretty extraordinary. And then he put,
you know, a kind of a teaser together, just to give me a taste of the footage of the things he had been seeing, which I didn’t access to. I don’t
speak Farsi. So, I didn’t have access to kind of some of the Telegram channels.
And I was — you know, when I watch what he showed me, I was moved. I was in tears. I was angry. And I knew, along with the executive producer, Fiona
Stourton, that we needed to get this out as soon as possible.
AMANPOUR: And we are going to, you know, dive into a little of the specifics, because it does make one angry and sad given what happened to
the — many of the women and to a lot of the protesters, including the children.
But, Farnaz, as a journalist who has been covering it, albeit now from a distance, but with unbelievable and unparalleled access to sources inside
Iran, you know, one year later, where does this protest movement start stand? Because, you know, you’ve profiled many people, including somebody
in prison in Iran, an activist, Narges Mohammadi, who said, we, the people of Iran, are transitioning out of the Islamic Republic’s theocracy.
Transition won’t be jumping from one point to the next. It will be a long and hard protest but the evidence suggests it will definitely happen.
Do you think the evidence suggests? What do you think is the trajectory from now?
FARNAZ FASSIHI, REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Hi, Christiane. Thank you for having me. I think that after a year of this uprising, we can
definitely say that Iran has evolved, the society has evolved, that there’s a huge gap now between the public and the Islamic Republic and the demand
for overhaul all sale change has never been more clear.
We’ve seen that, yes, the security forces and the government was successful in brutally crushing the mass protests that we saw all over Iran, but they
haven’t been able to really kill this desire for revolutionary change that we’ve see in Iran. You know, we’ve seen protests movements over the past 40
years sparked by different things. But this time around, I think it was very clear that the people in the streets, woman leading, young people at
the forefront of it, the new generation were calling for an end to the Islamic Republic.
And if we were to just look at the way that the women continue to defy the hijab law, they continue to defy the government’s attempt to control what
they wear, to control how the appearance in society, we see that this movement is living through the people of Iran this desire for change lives,
because despite the new law that’s being considered in the parliament that you mentioned and, you know, criminalization of showing your hair and not
wearing hijab, our reporting and evidence shows that women are still coming out not wearing the hijab every chance they get.
I’d also like to point out, we see that every chance that people get, be it funerals, be it religious Ashura ceremonies, whatever chance they have, or
Nowruz celebrations, when people can congregate in public that the — these gatherings quickly become political, they quickly turned into a rallying
cry against the oppression that they face.
So, we — you know, I don’t think that the Islamic Republic can ever go back to the pre-Mahsa era.
AMANPOUR: And in the actual documentary, Sasha, and of course, we have both seen it, Farnaz has seen it as well, it’s yet to air on PBS. We’ll do
this coming week. But you have one of your — one of the interviewees says, you know, our generation kind of accepted, had to accept all these
restrictions on women’s rights. But Gen Z and the younger generations simply will not tolerate it.
What are you hearing and now from inside, from your contacts, Sasha, about what the younger women are doing, about how they plan to resist, if so, any
kind of new more draconian hijab law that we mentioned?
ACHILLI: I mean, honestly, in terms of the news that just came out about the more draconian laws, it’s a really good question. And as Farnaz
mentioned, you know, although the street protests did die down, I was still amazed by the bravery of young women going out on the streets not wearing
their hijabs, dancing in public and filming it and posting it online and committing these acts of defiance, continuing acts of defiance.
It’s a really good question because I think that what I have understood, and maybe Farnaz can back me up on this, is that Gen Z also doesn’t have a
desire to leave Iran like the previous generation probably did to seek a better future and to find that freedom that perhaps they didn’t have in
Iran. I think what we heard was that, you know, they are committed to staying and seeing change. But, Farnaz, perhaps you can provide more
context to that.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Go ahead, Farnaz.
FASSIHI: Yes. I mean, we’re definitely seeing younger generation that even by the admission of their own government and their officials is very
different from past generations. They’re connected to the outside world, they’re very much online and active on social media, Instagram, Twitter,
Facebook, and they see the way that other people in other countries, people their age, are living. Their demands, their wants are very basic, they want
a basic good life. They want to be able dress the way they want. They want to have basic, you know, human rights and agency over their fate. And they
want to also be able to, you know, have a job that supports them, be able to get married, be able to buy a car.
And, you know, they look around and they see, not — they’re not — many of the young people that I talked to say, we’re not even comparing ourselves
with Europeans or Americans, we look at the region, we look at the way people live and even young people live in Turkey or in the Arab countries
around us, and why can’t we be the same? And we don’t have anything in Iran. We don’t have political freedom. We don’t have social freedom. We
don’t have economic prosperity. And they’re is also very fearless, right?
As the Islamic Republic has sort of evolved in a way that it’s kind of distanced itself from those ideological things that fueled the early years,
this young generation is not really ideologically invested in the Islamic Republic, they’re not particularly religious, they see themselves as really
global citizens and they’re fearless.
I don’t know if I would necessarily say that they don’t want to leave Iran. You know, even the government’s own sort of statistics show that people who
graduate from college, medical professionals, doctors, nurses, if they have a chance to leave, they’re leaving and the — you know, the brain drain
continues to be in sort of a rising, you know, pattern.
But for those who remain or those who can’t leave aren’t just going to give up and say, well, this is the way it is, we’re going to put up with it.
AMANPOUR: Right.
FASSIHI: They have shown their resolve to fight.
AMANPOUR: It is extraordinary. And I just want to pick up on what you both were saying about, you know, they are brave, the government cracks down on
the media and on any sort of diversity in the media, and yet, they have continued to use whatever access they have to the internet, to social
media, continue to post all these videos of individual acts of defiance.
Let us just play small clip from the film, highlighting the very major role that the internet and social media has played in at least, you know,
showing the world these protests.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Despite internet blackouts imposed by the government, videos went viral showing extraordinary acts of defiance. School girls
filmed and shared footage of themselves defacing pictures of the supreme leader, a crime under Iranian law.
CROWD: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. We’re all in this together. — are not united we will be destroyed one by one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, you know, that shows us in — you know, a stark color, in black and white exactly how this message is getting, you know, sent around
the world and within. But you have also — and we know that young children, young girls, a lot of young women have been targeted by sexual violence
when they are arrested and put into jail. And even under suspicious circumstances, some have died.
And for instance, a very well-known case is that of the 16-year-old, Nika Shahkarami. And her mother is featured in this documentary, and it’s a
really profound interview and the way the mother speaks about what happened to her daughter. Tell us a little bit, you know, Sasha, about that story
and about what you learned and what people will see the mother saying about the death of her daughter.
ACHILLI: So, it was actually quite extraordinary to have her agree to speak to Zar Amir Ebrahim, who is one of the women we film in the
documentary, who is reaching out to people inside Iran to understand more about what’s happening. And she — what was incredible about her narration
is that despite a lot of families being threatened by the regime, once their loved ones have died, she continues to stand up and continues to say
that her daughter was killed by the regime and also, that she’s proud of her daughter and for what her daughter did in ultimately sacrificing her
life for what she believed in. And want for freedom that Farnaz so beautifully put was, you know, the basic freedom, basic rights. Things that
in the West we’re so used to.
So, I felt like that was incredibly moving for her to hear, you know, calling her daughter and saying, please come home, it is dangerous.
And yet, still being — feeling really proud of her daughter for the sacrifice she made and hopes that the children’s lives won’t go wasted, and
they didn’t die in vain, essentially.
AMANPOUR: And of course, as we said, the Iranian authorities have always denied having a hand in her death. But a previous CNN investigation found
evidence suggesting that Nika had been detained at the protest shortly before she went missing.
And, Farnaz, it is really very deep to hear these women, these mothers talk about how proud they are, that their young children, their young daughters
are even braver than they ever were.
FASSIHI: I think mothers, grieving mothers have become really a nightmare for the Islamic Republic, because no matter how much they try to oppress
these, you know, crackdown and threaten and intimidate the mothers whose children they have killed, the moms speak out. I also did a big story on
Nika Shakarami and on Sarina Esmailzadeh who was — they were both 16 years old, and they both went out just to demand basic rights and they were
brutally killed.
But, you know, when they killed the children, it doesn’t — the harassment doesn’t end there. They continued to harass the families. They threatened
the families. Nika’s aunt was detained. Sarina’s mother was threatened, that if you speak up, we will also murder your son, who’s also her only
child. I also interviewed Nika’s mom on the phone, and our conversation was abruptly cut by whoever was listening. I assumed the intelligence ministry.
But despite all these pressures, the mothers refused to be silent. They are grieving mothers. And Christiane, as you know in our culture, mothers have
particular respect in our culture. And I don’t think there’s anyone who can listen to a mother grieving and crying and speaking of their child — of
their children who was — who have been killed and not sympathize and empathize with them. That’s why the regime wants to silence the moms
because they know the power that they have, you know, with the narrative of what’s happened to them and their families.
AMANPOUR: So — I mean, that absolutely comes across loud and clear in a very, very powerful way. And this film that you have essentially, you know,
gathered a lot of the evidence that was posted on social media, but these extra interviews just show the total courage of these people who are under
such daily threat for their lives. Whether the mothers, whether the girls.
And of course, we have this whole situation of the girls who were somehow poisoned in, you know, in schools and all the rest of it. And there’s a
whole new article, Farnaz. Is it — it’s your article, isn’t it? The wave of alcohol poisoning that has just come out. These alcohol poisonings in
Iran. I mean, A, what’s going? And this extra, apparently, use of alcohol, is it related to the pressures people feel in that country right now?
FASSIHI: Well, the people — I — so, there’s been — as you mentioned, there’s been a wave of alcohol poisonings because alcohol is banned in
Iran, the sale and consumption of it. So, this bootleg market — unregulated, bootleg market has, kind of, you know, taken off in Iran.
People really don’t know whether the alcohol they’re buying if it’s distilled at home or if it’s, you know, fake, sort of, brand models.
And, you know the — even the government says that there’s been rise in the number of people who’ve died, including a very famous Iranian artist,
Khosrow Hassanzadeh, who had drunk with his friends and then fell into a coma and died about a week later.
So, you know, the people that I interviewed, including Khosrow’s partner and friends and many other people said that we feel that this is — that we
are victims of religious oppression because if it weren’t for these restrictive rules, you know, like many other countries, we would have
access to safe regulated alcohol. So, you know, Christiane, people in Iran feel like they’re, kind of, hostages to economic, you know, corruption to,
you know, to many, many difficult things that they’re facing.
AMANPOUR: Right.
FASSIHI: And they just can’t seem to get a break.
AMANPOUR: Well, honestly, Farnaz Fassihi, remarkable continual reporting about Iran. And Sasha Joelle Achilli, it’s a really amazing documentary
that synthesizes everything in the world is, you know, been seeing over the last year and really puts into sharp focus. So, thank you both very much
for joining us. And of course, you can watch that FRONTLINE documentary “Inside the Iranian Uprising” on PBS next Tuesday. The film’s also
available to stream for free right now on FRONTLINE’s website, YouTube, and in the PBS app.
Iran’s ally, Russia, also cracks down on any dissent. And today, opposition activist Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to an additional 19 years in
jail on what his team calls trumped-up charges of extremism. And Nic Robertson is joining us now with the latest. So, Nic, I mean, was this an –
– did everybody expect this?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Navalny certainly did. I mean, he tweeted this morning that the prosecution has asked for 20
years. He said he thought the judge might give him 18 years. He said he thought it would be, you know, whatever the outcome it would be Stalinist
in its approach.
19 years, he won’t be shocked by that. In fact, he’s just released on a Telegram channel, a statement, which says, 19 years in a special regime
colony. It’s like a life sentence but, essentially, I’m serving a life sentence already. So, he — I don’t think he’s shocked by it. But this is
really going to put him in a place where he can’t reach his supporters in anyway.
AMANPOUR: Nic, did you find it strange or noteworthy that actually the Russian authorities allowed the press, at least some access, to the end of
this so-called trial and to this verdict?
ROBERTSON: You know, I think when you look at the images that we had, they’re almost comical and farcical. I mean, Navalny says these are
trumped-up charges. And I — you know, I think that stands a sniff test here.
The whole courtroom itself looked as flimsy and as prefabricated and transitory as the charges against him. And where the media were held, they
didn’t get into the courtroom, of course. They were kept in another room. So, they only had one television screen where they can see what was
happening. And the camera in the courtroom, you couldn’t see the judge. You could only see Navalny and his legal team.
And this is the most farcical part of it all. Navalny had a co-defendant in there with him, one of his media team. The audio from the judge was so
distorted, even his legal team could barely understand what the judge was saying about Navalny’s case. And they’re still scratching their heads about
what his co-defendant, his — the gentleman who was running his YouTube channel for him. They still don’t know what sentence he got. I mean,
farcical.
AMANPOUR: Indeed. Well, thanks, Nic, for that update.
No amount of silencing on the home front, though, will quietening the — will quieten the troubles on Russia’s western front. Ukrainian forces
continue to push against its heavily dug-in defenses. And this week, they launched several drone attacks, taking the conflict right to the Russian
capital.
WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you. And Joshua Yaffa, welcome to the show.
JOSHUA YAFFA, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Thanks for having me.
ISAACSON: You got this great piece in the New Yorker about the Wagner Group, the mercenary army that was sort of loyal to Putin, but then helped lead a rebellion against him. Kind of unclear where their loyalties are, but there’s been big news this week that both the Lithuanian president and the Polish Prime Minister are worried that the Wagner Group is now trying to destabilize NATO by going to the border of Poland. Let me read you something that the Polish Prime Minister said. “The Wagner Group is extremely dangerous, and units of this group are deployed on NATO’s Eastern Flank to destabilize it.” What is the Wagner Group doing and why?
YAFFA: I think it’s important to remember that the Wagner Group owing to its leader Yevgeni Prigozhin, is oftentimes as much an information or PR operation as it is a military one. We saw that at certain points in the war in Ukraine over the winter and spring. And really that is intrinsically tied to Prigozhin’s own biography. He, after all, among other things, was the creator of the internet research agency, the so-called St. Petersburg Troll Farm, that among other things caused mischief online and was part of the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election. So, trolling both metaphorically – in some ways, quite literally – the West is very much part of Prigozhin’s MO and getting Western leaders societies’ militaries upset, worried, guessing about what Wagner might do, is exactly part of Prigozhin’s larger game. I don’t necessarily think a Wagner incursion into Europe, especially into NATO territory, is all that likely in the near term.
By most estimates, there are several thousand, at most, Wagner fighters who have now relocated to bases in Belarus. I don’t think that’s a realistic contingent, just given their size and their armaments that could take on NATO forces in the Baltic states, in Poland or elsewhere, that would essentially be a suicide mission for Wagner were they actually to engage NATO forces, but keeping NATO on edge, keeping NATO countries guessing, worried, having to devote their own resources to preemptively protecting against what might be a Wagner threat, even an unlikely one. All of that very much fits with Prigozhin and Russia’s own strategy of behavior over the years.
ISAACSON: You say Prigozhin’s strategy and Russia’s strategy, are they still aligned?
YAFFA: That’s one of the many million dollar questions surrounding Wagner. I’d say. There’s not just just one of those, but several are trying to understand the relationship between Wagner and the Russian state, past, present, and future. It – even with the hindsight with, with the help of hindsight, looking back at Wagner operations in Syria, Africa, and of course in Ukraine over the last year, it’s not even always clear when we actually have some data to look at how exactly Wagner is connected to the Russian state. How exactly are they carrying out Kremlin orders, or are they following their own interests and imperatives, especially say, commercial ones and how that might work in the future, I think is even more of a mystery.
Clearly, Putin was displeased, to put it mildly by the mutiny or insurrection – whatever term you, you might prefer – that Wagner mounted, and Prigozhin specifically, in late June, would like to put Wagner on a tighter leash, have a little more hierarchical control, bring them into the so-called vertical of power as the Putin-era hierarchy of centralized power is often referred to. But that’s tricky because in Wagner’s very DNA is an element of autonomy and deniability. What made Wagner Wagner was the ability for the Kremlin to both winkingly, but with some seriousness, keep the group at arm’s length —, say ‘those aren’t our guys, what they’re doing in Syria, what they’re doing in Africa, it’s not our business.’
Of course, it always matched up with larger Kremlin geopolitical interests, but it was very convenient to have this deniable shadow force. And that’s a paradox now that the Kremlin is gonna have trouble solving.
ISAACSON: One of the amazing things in your piece is the description of the brutality of the Wagner group. We all kind of knew it, but you really brought it home to us. Describe that and how you got that in your piece.
YAFFA: Ever since Wagner entered the war in Ukraine last spring, we began to hear information trickling out about that kind of brutality that you mentioned. A practice, for example, known as “obnuleniye,” which is Russian for zeroing out, a really macabre and awful euphemism for battlefield execution. The killing of those who Wagner fighters, mainly recruits from Russian prisons, who refused to march forward, who tried to retreat, who ran away from training bases. They were rounded up by Wagner security and in front of other Wagner fighters, publicly executed. And that’s a degree of brutality we don’t find even in the Russian armed forces, by and large, which we know from this year and a half of war has its own share of brutality and war crimes, the massacre and butcher of many others. There, there are too many to name. But this practice seems specific to Wagner, the use of human waves the use of human wave attacks, a style of fighting we haven’t seen, perhaps since World War II, in which one wave of another, largely of these convict recruits recruited out of Russian prisons, were sent into the fight, not even so much to advance or seize territory, but the first waves were sent just to draw fire, to be attacked so that other waves behind them could identify Ukrainian positions and then fire upon them.
The survival rate from these human wave attacks was absolutely dreadful, bodies piling up. I was able to speak to some of these prison recruit fighters who were then injured or captured on the battlefield in Ukraine, and are located in or held in Ukrainian custody. And inside Ukraine I was able to speak with some of these fighters with their permission, and they described an incredibly gruesome difficult, traumatic detail, just how they and their comrades were used in these human wave attacks with death all around them. One wave, one wave after another, being mowed down by machine gun fire, targeted with artillery. And what I heard from Ukrainian military commanders was, especially at the beginning, a sense of shock and disorientation at just how irrational Wagner fought. Wagner just kept pushing on…no matter how many losses they took, they just kept pushing forward one wave after another. And for Ukrainian military units, this was a difficult tactic to defend against. And that in some measure is – explains why Wagner was one meter after another with extraordinary losses on its own side, able to push forward, take territory in Eastern Ukraine across the portion of the front where Wagner was most active, all the way up to the city of Bakhmut, the signal battle for Wagner, and one of the signal battles of the war in Ukraine which Wagner was able to capture in late May.
ISAACSON: One of those recruits that you talked to, prisoner, I think was named Alexei. Is that right? And I think he helped describe what you just described as a meat storm, but then he said it was “a giant mistake.” Get me into the mind of a person like that.
YAFFA: The person you mentioned, Alex Alexei was recruited out of Russian prison. Initially he received a prison sentence of almost 20 years for murder. He was only a few years into that sentence when the war on Ukraine started, and when Prigozhin personally arrived by helicopter in the prison yard to make his pitch was, was essentially joined Wagner, come fight in Ukraine. You might die. Prigozhin, by the way, was very direct and honest about that. He didn’t hide the cost of the war and that, and that gave him a kind of appeal among certain segments of Russian society. But if you survive again, which I don’t guarantee, then after six months, you’ll have your freedom. And for someone like Alexei who was desperate, who saw no future for himself, who had children on the outside that he thought he might never see again, or would be an old man when he got out of prison, this gamble seemed worth it.
And no matter how much Prigozhin indeed explained and didn’t hide the horrors of war, impossible to imagine the true nature of these so-called meat storms. As, as you said, the use of these human wave attacks, the use of the practice of zeroing out that I referred to, and the actual visceral real experience for someone like Alexei, once they ended up in as a participant in one of these meet storms, was far more awful and terrifying than anything that they had allowed for. And, and, and for that reason, Alexei believed, at least as he told me, his participation in Wagner’s war effort was a mistake also, because it became clear to Alexei again as he narrated to me from Ukrainian custody. I think it’s important to note that caveat. I wasn’t able to independently verify many of the details of his story, let alone how he related to them, let’s say kind of emotionally or intellectually. But the recruiting pitch that Prigozhin made was very much centered on Russia under attack, on foreign western NATO armies fighting Russia, the use of foreign mercenaries. And that’s who Alexei thought he was going to Ukraine to fight. And so he – when he was ultimately captured by a Ukrainian military unit by guys who he said were more or less just like himself, that also came as a shock, at least as Alexei narrated it to me, and was further reason for him to believe his participation in the war to be a mistake.
ISAACSON: One of the original commanders of the Wagner group was Dmitry Utkin, is that how you say it? And a very much of a Nazi sympathizer. How much is that infused into the Wagner Group and even the name of the Wagner group?
YAFFA: Well, you’re right in that the, the name itself comes from Utkin’s own professed proclivity for the German composer, Richard Wagner, who himself was a very celebrated figure in the Third Reich and said to be among Hitler’s favorite composers. I’ve heard from a number of people, and there’s wide reporting on this from Russian colleagues and just open source about Utkin’s, let’s say Nazi or pro fascist proclivities. There are documents circulating, published by a Russian investigative outlet dossier center, that show Utkin’s signature on internal documents in the form of two lightning bolts, the insignia of the SS, and whether for that reason or just a general climate of total brutality, cruelty, sadism, the internal culture of Wagner, as we’ve talked about with the practice, for example, of zeroing out, the use of these meat storms is incredibly brutal. There’s another moment in the piece I describe from Syria where Wagner was active over the course of many years and still has a presence that a video surfaced at a certain point, showing fighters who were later determined to be attached to a Wagner unit, torturing a Syrian captive, beating him with sledgehammers, trying to cut off his head with a knife, ultimately decapitating him with a shovel.
And that when I asked another member of Wagner’s team, or when I asked another fighter who was in Syria for Wagner, who was horrified by this video, who was disgusted by the behavior shown on it, but asked where, where this came from, why it happened, you know, he, he said that this was an extreme example of essentially Wagner tactics to try and cause maximum terror, maximum horror as a way of frightening the enemy. I heard something similar from a Wagner fighter I spoke to who had fought in Ukraine, where he led a detachment of prisoner fighters. And this commander also witnessed a scene of so-called zeroing out where a number of Wagner fighters were publicly executed after they apparently tried to retreat from the battlefield. And this Wagner commander said something to me that this stems from Prigozhin’s own philosophy, if you will, Prigozhin’s own understanding of war and how to carry it out of causing maximum fear, not just to the enemy, but within one’s own ranks as a way of maintaining discipline. Why do those Wagner fighters keep pushing forward in a way that I described having heard about from the Ukrainian commanders in a way that most other military units would not behave? It’s because they were afraid if they didn’t move forward, that they would be met with certain death on the backend if they came back without having achieved their objective or having been seen to, to retreat. So it was through these terrible methods that Prigozhin believed he was achieving a certain effectiveness on the battlefield.
ISAACSON: You end your piece with some reporting from a camp in Belarus where this founder of the Prigozhin’s Wagner Group Dmitry Utkin tells a crowd, and let me quote from your piece. This is what he says. “This is not the end, but just the beginning of the biggest job in the world, which will be carried out very soon.” That’s pretty ominous. What’d he mean by that?
YAFFA: I agree. It’s, it’s ominous and that’s, again, part and parcel of the Wagner brand, if you will to project an air of, of maximum menace. I, what I think is really going on, as we’ve talked about earlier in our conversation, is that Wagner, specifically Prigozhin, but also people like Utkin are still negotiating with the Kremlin as to what their future role will be, where will they be deployed and how they seem to be largely off the battlefield for now in Ukraine, but still very present in places like Africa, Syria as well. And I think what we’re seeing is the evolution into something we might call Wagner 2.0 and then that’s happening in real time. I think it’s too early to say exactly how this group will operate and where going forward, but what’s clear is, and, and again this returns to some themes we’ve talked about so far, is that Prigozhin’s wings are much less clipped than we might have thought a month ago. That he has much more freedom to act and pursue his ambitions than we might have thought was the case, say on the day of June 24th. And, and the mere fact that Utkin was able to give this speech alluding to future work and expansion of work shows how much the Wagner story is still not over.
ISAACSON: Joshua Yaffa, thank you so much for your reporting and for joining us.
YAFFA: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: And finally, tonight there is a revisiting history. 80 years ago, a young lieutenant named John F. Kennedy was stationed in the Solomon Islands when
his World War II patrol boat was sunk by a Japanese Destroyer. The crew ended up overboard, but Kennedy led them to safety on a tiny island three
and a half miles away. To find food, JFK swam to surrounding islands before two allied island scouts came to their rescue. His actions earned him a
navy and marine corps medal and a purple heart. He’s the only president who have received that medal.
On the anniversary of the ship sinking, his daughter, the current ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, and her son Jack, recreated part
of her father’s heroic swim.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAROLINE KENNEDY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRALIA: An incredibly emotional experience for me and for my son. And I’m so lucky to be able to be here
and to thank the community and the families of the Solomon scouts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: She also said the island’s, “Made President Kennedy the man he was. It was where he first experienced the responsibility of leadership.”
And that is it for now. Goodbye from London.