Hillary Clinton Reacts to Alexey Navalny’s Death

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR:  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is joining me. And you very quickly tweeted, Madam Secretary — thank you for being with us on this day — you know, your condolences not only to his family and friends and his staff, but to the people of Russia.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Yes.

AMANPOUR: You were sending a message.

CLINTON: I was, Christiane. You know, I have gotten to know Navalny’s wife and daughter. I have gotten to work with the number of the people who have been around him exposing corruption, putting together an opposition agenda to Putin. And it was so tragic to hear that he’s been killed. And there’s no doubt in my mind — and I know President Biden just made a statement based on the intelligence available to our government — that his death is a result of Putin’s brutality. And it is a tragedy for Russia that someone who was willing to stand up and speak out and really represent a different future for Russia should be killed. And you probably have heard that he was actually on video yesterday from the prison doing some kind of a legal appearance. He looked healthy. He was his usual kind of confident, joke-cracking self. In fact, his wife and others who saw that video yesterday were quite reassured that he was OK. And then we get this terrible news today.

AMANPOUR: And I want to read what you chose of him to put out in your tweet. This is Alexei Navalny, listen, I have got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. You know, that was him —

CLINTON: Right.

AMANPOUR: — kind of a death foretold —

CLINTON: Right.

AMANPOUR: — and trying to tell his people, do not give up hope one way or the other. And you have had plenty of experience when you were secretary of state with President Putin, with elections there, with the whole attempt at some kind of democracy. What do you think this means today? I mean, what room is there in Russia anymore for that?

CLINTON: Well, I think it’s important that those of us who believe in the human spirit and freedom and democracy and who believe the Russian people deserve a lot better than they’re getting under Putin and his cronies take to heart what Navalny said in that quote that I used in responding to his death, because, you know, change doesn’t happen easily, and it doesn’t happen because we want it. It happens because, year after year, strong people are willing to say, this is wrong, we deserve better. And, honestly, I think what he is alluding to in that comment is, it shows weakness. He went back to Russia. The film about him going back and Putin’s first attempt to murder him by poison and how he miraculously recovered, thanks to German medical treatment — and we’re here in Munich. You know, this film, which you haven’t — if you haven’t seen it, you should see it — it won the Academy Award — shows a man who is truly, you know, engaged at every level, every cell of his body, in trying to, you know, stand up for what Russia could be. He knew when he went back he was going to be arrested. He was literally arrested at the airport. And I think it may not have been a death foretold, but an awareness of the risk he was taking. And it — this is a message also for people in Europe and in the United States, particularly, who think that you can somehow make a deal with Putin, that you can let down your defenses, when someone who’s as brutal a dictator as he is intends only to dominate. And if that means killing your opposition, as he’s done with so many people over so many years, or invading a peaceful neighbor and trying to bend it to his will, that’s what he will do.

AMANPOUR: So, you lead me obviously into, before this death, the real questions here, as I alluded at the beginning in introducing you, was, can Ukraine survive another year? Will the United States step up? And will the United States continue to be a leader of NATO, given former President Trump’s recent comments? President Biden said this week, supporting this bill, the one foreign aid and military aid, is standing up to Putin; opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.

CLINTON: Yes.

AMANPOUR: What — I mean, you’re a former senator. You know, the Senate came kicking and screaming, but they passed it. But the House hasn’t passed it.

CLINTON: Right.

AMANPOUR: Where do you think, you know, in the political realm, this is going to go?

CLINTON: Well, one thing I know for sure, if this bill from the Senate were ever put on the floor of the House, it would pass. It would pass overwhelmingly, because the people who are preventing it, starting with the speaker, Mike Johnson, are not doing America’s business. They’re doing Donald Trump’s business. And why is Donald Trump so enamored of Putin? Well, part of it is, he’s a wannabe dictator. He has told us that repeatedly. He even said the other day, let’s basically get out of NATO and encourage Putin to do what he wants to do. How absurd a statement that is cannot even be, you know, measured, because you are essentially giving a green light to a murderous, brutal dictator. Nobody who is siding with Trump on this issue would want to live under that kind of regime.