Wife of Imprisoned Russian Dissident on Navalny’s Death

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I want to bring in Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of jailed Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza. And she joins me now. Evgenia, thank you so much for joining us. If anyone can understand what Alexei’s family is going through right now and experiencing it, is you. Your husband also a true Russian patriot. Survived poisoning a number of times. And once again is sitting behind bars unlawfully following his opposition to the war in Ukraine. I’m curious to get your reaction to the news of the death of Alexei Navalny.

EVGENIA KARA-MURZA, WIFE OF JAILED RUSSIAN OPPOSITION FIGURE VLADIMIR KARA- MURZA: Hello, Bianna. Thank you very much for inviting me. Well, Alexei Navalny’s team has not yet confirmed the news.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

KARA-MURZA: And Yulia herself has spoken at Munich, but she said that she had not received any confirmation from the Russian authorities either. So, the Russian authorities have not yet notified the family of Alexei of his death. And I know that the chances of him still being alive are extremely slim. And maybe I just — maybe it’s what I do. I’ve been doing this for years. Both times that my husband was poisoned in the past, he was given a 5 percent survival chance, and I thought I’d take that. I take those 5 percent. And I’ll do everything I can. So, I can only imagine how — what horror they’re living through right now, his loved ones, and my heart goes out to them entirely and breaks for them. I cannot — if anyone needed yet another demonstration of the nature of Vladimir Putin’s regime, and I mean, if the war in Ukraine and the war crimes committed, there are somehow not enough, well, this is yet another demonstration that the only thing a bully understands is a strong response. There is nothing else that works. And I was — you know, when I was trying to process that information this morning, I thought to the interview with Tucker Carlson recently, and I was thinking about how he sat there listening to Vladimir Putin’s mumbling about this historical nonsense. And thinking, well, he has not asked one single question about war crimes in Ukraine. He has not asked him about repression in Russia and about hundreds and thousands of Russian political prisoners. And Vladimir Putin believed, yet again, that he could get away with all of that. I believe so. It’s the only thing a bully understands is force, is strength of his opponent. And, well, I’m horrified today.

GOLODRYGA: Evgenia, you mentioned Tucker Carlson. I don’t want to spend too much time talking about him, but I do want to read to you and to our viewers about something you just referenced and why he wasn’t asked about the war. He was asked in a separate summit a few days after his interview, whatever you want to call it, with Putin. He was asked why he didn’t talk about freedom of speech in Russia or Navalny or the assassinations, the multiple assassinations coming down at the hands of the Kremlin and Tucker’s response was, “Every leader kills people, including my leader. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people.” And I raised this not just because this is a jaw dropping response, but it echoes something that we heard from Former President Trump when he was then Candidate Trump, I believe, in 2015. And that is, you know, we have killers here in the U.S. too. How dangerous — speak to how dangerous comments like that are in response to what we’re seeing perpetrated by the Russian regime on a daily basis.

KARA-MURZA: These comments are indeed very, very dangerous, and they are absolutely despicable also. And I believe that this is why Vladimir Putin gave this interview to Carlson, because he did not need a reliable journalist. He needed someone like Tucker Carlson who repeats and reiterates the messages put out there by Former President Trump. He needed someone with a large audience and someone who would help him get out his message about his claims on Ukraine being somehow legitimate and about him not really being a killer, but, well, you know, he’s a good guy who really wants peace. This is despicable. And the only thing I can say about Vladimir Putin is that this despicable atrocity of a man who calls himself the president of the Russian Federation should be stopped. He has to be stopped, and that is the only way war will be stopped and repression in Russia will be stopped.