Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lead, state TV hosts referred to the opposition leader as “that man,” “that citizen,” or “the Berlin patient” — a mocking reference to his recovery period after being poisoned with Novichok by suspected agents of the Russian state.
After Navalny died in the prison north of the Arctic Circle to which he had recently relocated, prominent propagandists started to drop his name with ease. Once his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said on February 19 that she was “going to continue the work” of her late husband, she entered their crosshairs as well.
Some of the language and accompanying hints of a dark future for Navalnaya left the discerning viewer with an ominous impression of Kremlin rage that the widow had shown impudence to step into her husband’s shoes.
During his February 20 show, Full Contact, the host Vladimir Solovyov targeted Navalnaya in one of his infamous rants. Implying Navalny’s death was linked to Western security services and his attorneys and timed to coincide February 16-18 Munich Security Conference, he said: “It’s all clear with the death of this Berlin patient on the opening day of the Munich Conference, two days after his attorneys paid him a visit at the colony.”
Solovyov wondered whether Navalny should even be afforded a burial place, baselessly accusing him of being a “terrorist.” He brought up opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in cold blood just yards from the Kremlin (by suspected state agents in 2015), warning those who seek to honor his memory: “You are enemies of my country!”
Solovyov’s diatribe, already menacing, then took an even wilder turn as he returned to the subject of Navalnaya.
The Kremlin-decorated state TV host warned that Navalny’s widow will suffer the same extreme persecution as her late husband. Solovyov exclaimed, “The same fate awaits Navalnaya! If she comes to Russia, she will go to prison.”
Some elements of Russian propaganda are better understood inside the country than in the West. Solovyov was not unsubtle enough to state that Navalnaya is now an enemy of the state and subject to the same targeting by the security services, but he didn’t need to. After all, we now know what happens to those who “go to prison.”
By detailing Navalny’s supposed crimes, he made a typical Putinist defense of state murder while seeking to shift the responsibility elsewhere.
“The West is the only beneficiary of his death! Here, he wasn’t interesting to anyone, unwanted and forgotten — totally gone. They had to revive interest, shake things up, and disrupt the fantastic effect from the interview of our country’s leader with Tucker Carlson. There was the opening of the Munich Conference, his wife is there . . . and here is a gift for them!”
Solovyov recalled a long-standing Russian tradition of not speaking ill about the dead but immediately maligned Navalny, calling him “a Nazi” and the creator of a “totalitarian cult” that is sending donations to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
He claimed that Navalny’s followers “will send Navalnaya back to Russia so she can be imprisoned.” He surmised, “She already said and did enough to end up in prison.”
Solovyov continued, “As Navalny’s own experience demonstrates, no amount of pressure would change anything.”
As always, other propagandists joined the Navalny denunciation with supporting content (unsurprising given that TV network executives regularly hold meetings with top Kremlin officials, who decide their lines of attack.)
Host Roman Golovanov started his February 20 broadcast of Golovanov’s Time on Solovyov Live by stating, “I would like to say a couple of words about Navalny . . . He was under constant surveillance by the British and American intelligence services . . . despite everything that happened, I am certain that prison was the safest place for Navalny. There was no safer place for him! If he was somewhere in Berlin or roaming free someplace here, all of this would have happened a lot faster and a lot sooner.”
Golovanov then contradicted himself, speculating that Navalny most likely died of natural causes. “There is no need to even talk to anyone who says that the Kremlin gave an order to kill Navalny . . . It’s clear for whom all of this was beneficial. First and foremost, the British!” he said.
This follows a long-established Kremlin obsession where Putin’s Russia — like the Soviet Union before it — looks to blame the British for most suspicious deaths that actually benefit the Kremlin.
Golovanov added: “The fact that Yulia Navalnaya immediately appeared — within seconds — she stepped out at the Munich [Security] Conference and started to speak, with a beautiful manicure.”
Head of RT Margarita Simonyan did the same, as she falsely accused Navalnaya of smiling and enjoying her time in the spotlight, baselessly claiming that she never truly loved her husband.
In the same breath, Simonyan praised Putin for working as hard “as a galley slave” and urged everyone to thank him, just in time for next month’s “presidential election” — where he has no real opponents.
Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
