©By Lucy Komisar
Feb 22, 2023
(story includes some updates)

How do you make a good propaganda film? How do you expose it before it wins a truth-telling award and embarrasses the prize-givers — before they discover it’s a pseudo-documentary that has been nominated for an “Oscar” – before the white envelopes are opened before millions of people on Oscar night, March 12^th?

Of course, the film won, as Americans are easy to deceive, by films as well as by governments.

 “Navalny” is a slick production full of easily-documented fabrications, disinformation, with lots of clever visuals to distract and manipulate viewers. It is about Russian political activist Alexei Navalny, who according to the U.S.-government funded Levada Institute has shown 2% support in Russia. But he and the film have a great deal of backing in Washington and London.

The three people credited as the production’s authors are Canadian Daniel Roher; he admits he has never visited Russia nor speaks Russian. Bulgarian Christo Grozev of Bellingcat; this is an organization openly hostile to Russia which acknowledges financing by governments of the U.S, UK and Europe, including by the National Endowment for Democracy, which took up the CIA’s funding role when that was exposed. In this video, U.S. officials admit its role as a NATO asset.

And Russian Maria Pevchikh; she has worked for Navalny’s organization but has lived mostly outside Russia since 2006 and in 2019 obtained a British passport. Here’s a video about her curious connections to the UK government, a job in the UK parliament and insider information that Navalny would then [how did he know it] reveal about Russians accused of corruption.

Another Navalny connection to the UK is his associate Vladimir Ashurkov’s role as an asset of the Integrity Initiative, an operation of the British MI6. CNN and Der Spiegel, which have put their names on the findings, acknowledge they joined an investigation by the group Bellingcat. This organization is widely reported to be an MI6 (British intel) asset. This challenges the film’s credibility as an independent production.

The link to U.S. intelligence is even stronger. The film’s hero, Alexei Navalny, in 2005 created a youth social movement, named “DA! – Democratic Alternative.” According to a cable revealed by Wikileaks, it got money from the NED (National Institute of Democracy), the NGO funding arm of the CIA.

Navalny’s racism

This segued into the “nationalist” ie. racist anti-immigrant activities beginning 2007, when he organized the National Russian Liberation Movement (NAROD). When NAROD was announced in 2008, it included the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), a far-right, nationalist and racist organization. In addition to opposing illegal immigration, the DPNI targeted Russians from ethnic, religious, and sexual minority backgrounds. It provided assistance to Nazi skinheads implicated in attacks on foreigners, representatives of sexual minorities, anti-fascists and adherents of “non-traditional religions.” In a speech, the founder said, “We will free Europe! Russia will be white!” And “We are the real power, not those who are hiding in this Torah!”

Click the link below, not the link in the photo.

In this video, Navalny compares ethnic minorities to cockroaches, and says that using a swatter or a shoe against them was no good. Note the Caucasus Muslim faces on the screen on the left and the billowing garb of the threatening man on the right. The words under the photo say HOMOSAPIENS. And under that BEZPREDELIUS.

A Russian analyst said: The word is a combination of two words: “bez”, which means without and “predel” which means limit. The ending “ius” is added to the word “bezpredel” (“беспредел”) to make it sound like a Latin word. Google translates it as “lawlessness,” but the use comes from criminal jargon and meant actions that were not allowed by the unwritten criminal code of conduct in correctional institutions. In early days the meaning of this word was “actions that go beyond all written and unwritten laws.”

And that is how Navalny describes the men in the photo. The analyst said, “The three people in the photo look very familiar. They are Chechens,” from the Caucuses. Navalny says, “In such cases [dealing with such insects] I recommend a handgun.” See the video.

Here he is on video speaking at the annual march of NAROD, an event that featured smashing windows of Muslim-owned shops.

The “new political nationalism,” Navalny said at the time, “should become the core of Russia’s political system.” Such public activities and statements apparently didn’t prevent invitations by the Open Society and Yale.

Director Roher says in the film that, “he was known for having flirted with the extreme right.” “Flirted?” It looked like a pretty solid marriage! Roher says he has to ask Navalny about his “early days” when “he walked side by side with some pretty nasty nationalists and racists. Had he moved beyond that? Had he actually become a reverse dark knight?”

Navalny apparently rejects the proffered knighthood. He responds: “Well, in the normal world, in the normal, political system, of course, I would never be within the same political party with them. But we are creating coalition, broader coalition to fight their regime…And I consider it’s my political superpower, I can talk to everyone. Anyway, well, they are citizen of Russian Federation.” Sounds rather mild compared to the enthusiasm of his public statements for NAROD. Roher ran some other videos of Navalny’s past, but somehow missed the cockroach one. Or any details of what the far right was doing to the people they reviled.

(American “liberals” cheering Navalny and the film should see the video. Would they “cancel” him? Or do virulent racists who attack Putin get a pass?)

He continued his Washington ties in the standard NED-CIA trajectory. He was a 2009-2010 fellow of the Open Society Foundations financed by George Soros, which supported a network of opposition NGOs in Russia before being banned in 2015. Then in 2010, he graduated from the Yale World Fellows which was called the White House Fellows under Bill Clinton’s presidency and is now the Yale Greenberg World Fellowship, after the donor, who got naming rights. The first program director of the Yale fellowship was Dan Esty, energy and environmental policy adviser for the 2008 Obama campaign.

Navalny’s Handlers

Navalny’s adoption by American interests plus the employment of his anti-corruption chief Maria Pevchikh at the British parliament support suspicions that they are assets of U.S.-UK intelligence (CIA – MI6) used to sow dissension in the targeted adversary state, Russia. It’s standard practice.

Navalny’s NAROD stopped operating in 2011, the year the Supreme Court of Russia declared its partner DPNI an extremist organization and banned it. Navalny said NAROD “organizationally failed” but formulated a “very correct platform.” His education about “democracy” in the U.S. apparently didn’t change his racism.

At this point, Navalny’s handlers in Washington must have told him that racism and anti-Semitism would not play in the U.S. So, when Navalny returned to Russia, he started an anti-corruption campaign, in line with Washington’s attacks on Russia. It was endorsed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Not to opine on the validity of his attacks on Russia’s leaders for corruption, which appear without evidence (though the western offshore system allows crooks to hide ownerships), there were a few problems which American politicians and pundits chose to ignore. Navalny allied with exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “MBK” had been jailed for ten years for documented tax evasion using offshore shell company transfer pricing to launder profits of oil company Yukos, which he obtained through the infamous corrupt loans for shares deal in the Boris Yeltsin years.

Who are the crooks?

And, a few years earlier, Navalny had had his own criminal fraud problem, along with his brother Oleg. In 2008, when the state-owned Russian Post decided to end collecting parcels from clients’ distribution centers, Oleg Navalny, who was a manager at the Russian Post Office’s automated sorting center in Podolsk, knew the plans and persuaded several companies to shift to the privately owned Chief Subscription Agency (GPA), not revealing it was a company he, Alexei and their parents had just set up in tax haven Cyprus. Later, Yves Rocher Vostok, part of the French cosmetics firm, sued that they were deprived of free choice and weren’t told GPA was using subcontractors which charged around half as much as they paid GPA and that the Navalny cutout kept the difference as profit. A court gave Alexei a suspended sentence of 3 ½ years and his brother a prison sentence of the same term as an accomplice.

Yves Rocher never sued for damages. Oleg Navalny was tried not for stealing from the French company but for personal enrichment through abuse of an official position. Western media muddied the facts, did not explain the charges, and depicted the trial as more bad stuff by President Vladimir Putin.

[In a story of the funeral after Navalny’s death, The New York Times wrote, “His brother Oleg, who served time in prison in what was widely seen as a punishment for Mr. Navalny’s political activities, was also absent.” “Widely seen”? By whom? Not by the European Court on Human Rights.]

The Court did not support the Navalnys’ claim of political persecution. The Court found, “By all accounts, GPA was set up for profit-making purposes and the applicants thus pursued the same goal as any other founder of a commercial entity.” So, in spite of questionable insider tricks, the European court deemed it no crime, because that is how business is done. But it was still an ethics problem for the “fighter against corruption,” because some people think that making money off such insider dealing is unethical.

Navalny also became a player in America’s Russiagate operation. He published a video in 2018 claiming that Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska acted as a messenger between President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chief Paul Manafort and a top Kremlin foreign policy official. The Trump-Russia stories have all been proved false, including this one. However, Navalny has not corrected his anti-Trump video. This confirms not only his standard for truthfulness in documentary work, but also what allies he has made in the U.S. It suggests that the 2018 video attacking Russian leaders could also be an agency fakery. CIA Director Pompeto said “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

But Washington’s boy (the Guaidó of Russia) was not so popular in his own country. During the Russian regional election campaign of 2020, Navalny was making regular trips out of Moscow to promote his anti-corruption organization. He claimed popular support, though according to the Levada Poll, he was drawing no more than 2% among Russians countrywide – less in the regions, more among the young in Moscow. When you read western media call him “leader of the opposition,” note that the real oppositions that got votes to the Duma were led by Zhirinovsky (right-wing) and Zyuganov (Communist). Call Navalny a “political operator,” ignored by most Russians and aligned with his U.S. paymasters. (His numbers were not enhanced by The Levada Center, which gets money from the NED, the NGO funding arm of the CIA.)

On August 20th, winding up a campaign in southeastern Siberia, Navalny got on the regularly scheduled flight from Tomsk to Moscow and fell ill. On the pilot’s decision, the aircraft made an unscheduled landing in Omsk, and Navalny was taken to a city hospital. The emergency ward staff treated his symptoms and stabilized his condition. A medical evacuation aircraft arrived from Germany the next day after Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, received Kremlin permission for his treatment in Germany, and he was flown from Omsk to Berlin August 22, with his wife accompanying him on the flight.

Navalny has had a history of medical conditions known to reflect the sudden reduction in blood sugar and cholinesterase levels – diabetes and allergies leading to anaphylactic shock. This information, which had been reported in Russia and by Navalny sources well before the Tomsk incident, was not make public after his arrival in Germany. Indeed, Pevchikh told the BCC Navalny did not have diabetes. For someone without diabetes, Navalny’s glucose level would have been dangerous. However, according to IntelliNews, published in Berlin, “Navalny said himself that he suffered from diabetes in 2019.”

The earliest claims that Russian intelligence agents had poisoned Navalny were made by CNN, which said they were based on a Bellingcat investigation. [Bellingcat is widely showed to be an MI6 asset.] The CNN articles, December 14 and 21, 2020, scripted the essence of what the film produced the following year and released in 2022.

The film starts with Navalny returning to Russia after several months in Germany and then goes to flashbacks.

In one of the flashbacks Navalny makes an admission whose honesty is worth noting. He is complaining that he has gone to Novosibirsk in Siberia to make a movie about local corruption. He says, “I expected a lot of people who’d try to prevent our filming, confiscate our cameras or just break our cameras or try to beat us. I expected that sort of things and I was very surprised, like, “Why is nobody here?” “Why is there kind of…” I even have this strange feeling like, like a lack of respect. Like, seriously? I’m here and where is my police?” This is evidence from Navalny himself that he was far less important than he, the western press, and the filmmakers claim he was. It casts doubt from the beginning of the Navalny film that the president of Russia was out to get him and sent hitmen to Tomsk.

But let’s get to the fabrications at the heart of the film. There’s a long section about how Christo Grozev, identified as working for Bellingcat, buys travel and contact data on the Darknet to find the names and phone numbers of Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had been traveling on planes to Siberia in August of 2020. There is no way to verify that the charts and faces substantiate what Grozev and Bellingcat say they prove, at least not at any standard required in any prosecution service or court in the U.S. In fact, CNN reported December 14, 2020, “CNN cannot confirm with certainty that it was the unit based at Akademika Vargi Street that poisoned Navalny with Novichok on the night of August 19.”

The Great Phone Call Hoax

The real test of the veracity of the film, the “smoking gun” to which everything is leading, is the great telephone call hoax. 

Those who made the film have understood the psychology of manipulating audiences. Slowly you bring them into a secret scam to be played on the bad guys. In this one, it starts with Navalny putting on a body mike. Why? He is not going somewhere to secretly record someone. Only his own team is in the room. The real recording microphone is off camera, where the film audience can’t see it. 

But the body mike is a special effect, it’s a dramatist’s stage trick. Click the arrow. Navalny speaks to the camera: “Now I’m totally feel like I’m an undercover agent, with the wired up.” Does the audience know they are the butt of a theatrical joke?

Navalny calls three “FSB” agents. This is a setup for a veracity diversion, a factoid – that’s a seeming truth disguising a fake. We can be sure of this now, because he says to each of them, “I am Navalny; why do you want to kill me?” And the fake people hang up. What is the point of that? It’s to convince the audience of Navalny’s film production that the FSB was being telephoned. The voices are not real, they sound the same – either computer generated or acted by a professional mimic.

But then there’s his pièce de résistance, the interview with “the scientist” whom Grozev tells Navalny to call, because he will be more likely to talk than the regular FSB agents.

Navalny declares (as translated), “Konstantin Borisovich, hello my name is Ustinov Maxim Sergeyevich. I am Nikolay Platonovich’s assistant.” He says, “I need ten minutes of your time …will probably ask you later for a report …but I am now making a report for Nikolay Platonovich … what went wrong with us in Tomsk…why did the Navalny operation fail?”

According to Bellingcat, (the real) Kudryavtsev worked at the Ministry of Defense biological security research center and is a specialist in chemical and biological weapons. Supposedly not so stupid.

The talkative “Konstantin” says, “I would rate the job as well done. We did it just as planned, the way we rehearsed it many times. But when the flight made an emergency landing the situation changed, not in our favor….The medics on the ground acted right away. They injected him with an antidote of some sort. So it seems the dose was underestimated. Our calculations were good, we even applied extra.”

Navalny was questioned by the Berlin Staatsanwaltschaft (District Attorney) on December 17, 2020. Did he tell them about the phone call to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, which allegedly took place on December 14?

The office confirmed the interrogation, but when I sent a link to Navalny’s claims about the December 14th “call” three days earlier, a spokesman said they could not comment further.

There are key clues to the film’s fabrications. They deal with dates and timing which are not subject to dispute: the dangers of Novichok, the date of “Kudryavstev’s” “cleaning” in Omsk, and the date of the phone calls.

Novichok

First about the “poisoning.”

Yulia Navalnaya says in the film, “After a week I was unexpectedly called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” As the Navalny group arrived August 22, that would have been about August 29^th. “They said we have discovered that your husband was poisoned with an agent from the Novichok group.” 

It was not the Charité lab that found this. The German Government announced not one week but two weeks after the group’s arrival that a laboratory of the German Armed Forces had identified a nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected after the patient’s admission to Charité. Link is to the Lancet report.

Unlike the civilian doctors, who had not found Novichok, the military lab would not release details of its tests. There was no toxicology report, no name of the expert in charge of the testing and of the interpretation of the results, no name and formula of the chemical compound of the “Novichok group.” The Germans refused to send any medical or toxicological evidence they claimed to substantiate the attempted homicide to Moscow prosecutors investigating the crime. From then on, by hearsay and without evidence, the story became the West’s “Putin poisoned Navalny.”

Second, Navalny’s underpants. Navalny, his wife Yulia, his assistant Pevchikh, his press spokesman, others in his group, and the reporters publishing what they were told had been claiming until that moment that the instrument of the Novichok, the poison vector, had been a tea cup at the airport café, then a water bottle in the Tomsk hotel room.

Pevchikh, she repeatedly told the press, had filmed the removal of the hotel room water bottles, taken them secretly to Omsk, then loaded them on the medevac flight to Berlin in the luggage of one of the medevac crew, and delivered them from the German ambulance into the Berlin hospital by hand. But then, after four months had elapsed, the story became underpants.

A CNN clip not in the film claims the poison was put on the underpants “across the seams” at the button flap, but in what form – powder, aerosolized spray, or gel? Was the FSB counting on Navalny not to notice or feel moisture as he dressed?  Was the poison then in direct contact with his body?

On the plane, Navalny fell ill, and the pilot diverted to Omsk, where he was transferred to a hospital. The calculated lethality of the dose should have been fatal after symptom onset. However, the first symptoms appeared only after several hours, and they remained non-lethal for at least one more hour between Navalny going to the toilet cabin on his flight and his reaching Omsk hospital.

The Timing of Kudryavtsev’s trip and “cleaning”

CNN declares that “Kudryavtsev” flies from Moscow to Omsk on August 25, five days after the event, to take possession of Navalny’s clothes and “clean” them. It displays a visual of a flight from Moscow. But the FSB would have known of the diversion to Omsk August 20^th. Would it have waited five days to send an agent there?

Were the underpants still considered dangerous? Did hospital workers who undressed Navalny get sick? Many people were exposed to Navalny and his deadly underpants, but not one has been reported to have fallen ill. The passengers who attended him in the plane and who flew on to Moscow have not reported medical problems. (For how Novichok affects people, see data from a university research scientist and a Food and Chemical Toxicology paper.)

The film “Kudryavtsev” voice says, “When we arrived [in Omsk], they gave [the underpants] to us, the local Omsk guys brought [them] with the police.” Did any police fall ill?

“Kudryavstev” says, “When we finished working on them everything was clean.” He explains that solutions were applied, “so that there were no traces left on the clothes.” CNN, in its video, has “Kudryavtsev” saying that he also cleaned Navalny’s pants, not mentioned in the film. Navalny is shown in Berlin holding the underpants. Did the Omsk police ship the “decontaminated” item to Germany?

There are more problems with this story.

There is conflicting information about whether Navalny’s underpants remained in Omsk.

Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh posted a tweet August 20, 2020 with the text: “Julia took Alexei’s things with her. She said that she did not allow them to be confiscated.” However, The Guardian reported September 21 that Navalny “demanded that Moscow return his clothes.” At any rate, the Charité Hospital said it did not test the water bottles or clothing.

Most important is the date of the phone call.

Ronald Thomas West, who identifies as a U.S. Special Forces veteran working in Europe, writes, with irony:

West says, “ The poisoning happened on 20 August, the ‘hoax call’ is made on 14 December, and released by Bellingcat on 21 December. Now, wait a minute. The context of the call, a desperate demand for answers of what went wrong (Navalny didn’t die) for a report to higher up authority, is something you would expect within the first 48 hours, not nearly three months later. By the time this call was made, that dust should have settled and been vacuumed up by Russia’s intelligence services, everyone would have been debriefed by this time, including the target of the hoax call.”

The Trojan Horse

Maya Daisy Hawke, the film’s co-editor, makes an unusual admission on her website. She said “It’s the best thing I ever worked on; the highlight of my career,” and adds, “Navalny was a Trojan horse.” I emailed her and asked what she meant, pointing out that Merriam-Webster defines trojan horse as “someone or something intended to defeat or subvert from within usually by deceptive means.” She walked it back and said, “They were hastily chosen words on a personal social media post.” She declined further comment and told me to contact the film’s publicist. I did. Charlie Olsky of Cineticmedia also declined to answer questions.

The film supports an analysis of the Russian public that is fallacious.

An unidentified woman says, “What to do with Navalny presents a conundrum for the Kremlin, let him go and risk looking weak, or lock him up, knowing it could turn him into a political martyr.” A U.S. broadcast reporter says, “Unexpectedly, Vladimir Putin has a genuine challenger. More than any other opposition figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny gets ordinary people out to protest.”

However, Eric Kraus, a French financial strategist working in Moscow since 1997, explains, “Mr. Navalny was always a minor factor in Russia. He had a hard-core supporter base — Western-aspiring young people in Moscow and St. Petersburg — the ‘Facebook Generation.’ He was never much loved out in the sticks and could never have polled beyond 7% nationwide, even before the war. Ordinary Russians now increasingly see the West as the enemy. Navalny is seen as the agent of forces seeking to break or constrain Russia. Now, he would get closer to 2%.” (Kraus has been cited as an expert by western media.)

Kraus said, “He is the supreme political opportunist. In Moscow, speaking in English to an audience of Western fund managers and journalists, it is the squeaky clean, liberal Navalny. Full of free markets, diversity, and social justice. Hearing him a few months later out in Siberia, speaking in Russian, one encounters an entirely different animal – fiercely nationalistic, angry and somewhat racist – there, his slogan is “kick out the thieves” but especially “Russia for the ethnic Russians,” anyone without Slavic blood, especially immigrants from the Caucuses, are second-class citizens.” NAROD may be gone, but it’s still in Navalny’s heart. Unlike what Roher says, his “current days” seem pretty much like the “early days” of his cockroach film.

Navalny’s parole required him to report to authorities on a regular basis. The Russians waved that as long as he was recovering in Berlin. But he failed to return after he recovered his health, and when, after six months, he finally did come back January 17, 2021, he was arrested for violating his parole and subsequently sentenced to prison. U.S. court rules for parole violations would not be different.

Another drama!

Finally, if readers can take any more drama, I ended up in the center of one!

As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, I was invited to a November 9, 2022 “Navalny” screening by CNN at 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan. The post-film moderator was Timothy Frye, professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University; the speakers were the filmmakers. I recorded them. Frye asked about “the one scene where Navalny is talking and getting the fellow to, you know, tricking him into speaking.”

Filmmaker Roher explained the political purpose: “And then the war started and what I understood was that this film became not just a film but we were now on a mission to remind the world that Vladimir Putin is not Russia and Russia is not Vladimir Putin and is Navalny.”

In the talk-back, I asked a question. “My name is Lucy Komisar, and I’m an investigative journalist. I want to delve more into the Kudryavtsev story. Mr. Navalny was questioned by the prosecutor in Berlin on December 17th. And three days earlier was the phone call with Kudryavtsev. Did he tell the prosecutor about the phone call which I assume they would have to check the authenticity of, and what did they determine about him? He claims on the phone call he examined these things on August 25 …. But on August 20 ….” [In fact,“Kudryavtsev” didn’t give the August 25th date, Bellingcat did.]

Interruption by Prof. Frye: “This is all on the issue and nobody else. Which is that after we stop in 10 minutes. There will be drinks. Okay, that’s….”

LK: “The point is the press secretary said Alexei’s things were taken by Yulia before that, and she didn’t allow them to be seized. So how could they have been examined by this man after they were already taken away? And finally, the Berlin doctor said they didn’t detect any poisoning in Navalny’s blood, but two weeks later it was the German Armed Forces laboratory that said, yes.

So, all these things I think are contradictory and I would like to know the facts of why these contradictions exist.”

Christo Grozev: “Almost none of this was actually correct and including the sequence of events. I mean this was reactive and FSB officer on screen on recording that I made on my phone confessing to all of that.”

LK: “You said it’s him, but we don’t know it’s him.”

Grozev: “Well, I think the rest of the world knows and now okay. Be nice to know who you work for because….”

LK: “Oh, is this gonna be a [Joe] McCarthy question now?”

And at the end, Prof. Frye: “Well, thank you, Tim, Maria, Christo and Daniel. Thanks also to CNN HBO Max Warner Brothers Pictures … .”

He invited us all to drinks at Milos, a trendy restaurant in the complex. I went to the reception and asked Roher if I could interview him. He screamed at me, Noooo! And accused me of working for the Russians.

Then on the 17^th I got an email from Nancy Bodurtha, Council on Foreign Relations Meetings and Membership Vice President. She had received complaints about my “conduct” at the screening. She threatened that I could be dropped from membership.

 She said: “I have received numerous complaints concerning your conduct at CFR’s November 9 documentary screening and discussion of Navalny. As stated in the member handbook, CFR is committed to maintaining a civil and respectful environment. All members are expected to exhibit the highest levels of courtesy and respect toward speakers, moderators, staff, guests, and one another. As a nonpartisan organization committed to hosting a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives to be debated and discussed freely, it is essential that the Council foster an inclusive and welcoming environment free from verbal, written, or physical harassment of any kind.

Per the Council’s By-Laws, a member may be dropped or suspended from membership for any conduct that is prejudicial to the best interests, reputation, and proper functioning of the Council. 

Please be advised that further misconduct may result in suspension with the possibility of the termination of your membership as determined by the board of directors.”

I replied:

“Dear Ms. Bodurtha

Regarding “numerous complaints concerning your conduct at CFR’s November 9 documentary screening and discussion of Navalny” which you cite, please send me copies of the complaints, including who sent them. I’m sure you agree that a Council member has the right to specifics on such an attack. If a person seeks anonymity, that raises questions about the truthfulness of their charges.

Did you investigate the complaints? If not, why not? If so, what were your findings?

Do you know what I said at the meeting? Like many journalists, when I ask a question of public figures in a public place, I record the interchange to make sure I can quote correctly.

[Here I repeated the recorded Q&A.]

What part of my question do you find objectionable? What as a journalist did I not have a right to ask? How was this harassment? Does courtesy and civility mean one cannot challenge what a film or speaker says?

Does allowing a wide range of viewpoints end when the challenge is to a view a Council staff member may not support? Were my statements deemed so dangerous that you voice a threat to throw me out of the Council? Who signed off on the decision to send me your notice?

After the film, I attended a reception where I encountered the filmmaker Daniel Roher and asked if I could interview him. In the presence of many people, he screamed at me, No! and said I was working for the Russians. Pretty much what Christo Grozev suggested. This persuades me that the “numerous complaints” came from Roher and his collaborators.

I look forward to you telling me who made the complaints, what they said, if you investigated their truthfulness and what in the above citation you find objectionable.

I don’t like attempts at intimidation. Neither should the Council. Nor would the Board. If I was not intimidated by killer racists in the early 60s, when I spent a year as editor of the Mississippi Free Press, I will hardly be intimidated now.

This persuades me I must write an article about the film and mention the “complaints” and your threat, which I dismiss as part of the cancel culture and deeply harmful to our society. Accordingly, let’s be clear that this exchange is on the record.

Lucy Komisar”

Her response was

“Lucy:  I acknowledge receipt of your response to my email and reiterate the Council’s expectation that members exhibit the highest levels of courtesy and respect toward speakers, moderators, staff, guests, and one another.  Best, Nancy”

Navalny, Bellingcat, and the filmmakers have made a documentary about the FSB creating not a professional hit, but a plan for immeasurable chaos, with high odds of failure and exposure to the public. The only professionalism is the filmmakers’ strike against their targets: the western media, the film’s audience, and maybe voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Navalny charged as a racist in 2023

Bringing Navalny’s racism to the present, from The Guardian a year ago. “A Muslim former employee of Amnesty International was sacked for challenging its decision to designate the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a prisoner of conscience despite his history of anti-immigrant statements. Aisha Jung said she lost her job at the organisation’s London office after she objected to the award of the status, arguing that Navalny had also incited violence against Muslims.” Link to her crowdjustice site.

The story did not interest western corporate or “progressive” media, but it was published here:

The Postil Magazine, and linked to by Johnson’s Russia List, ACURA (American Committee on US Russia Accord), Naked Capitalism, Occupy the Future / Alternative Banking, Moon of Alabama, and the Member Wall of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Postil: And the winner is…..envelope to the deep state and its asset Bellingcat, with a shout out to Victoria Nuland and her acolyte Antony Blinken, plus the mainstream and soi-disant independent media for turning a blind eye to the film’s fabrications.

This film, feeding Russophobia, primes Americans to support Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine even with the danger of nuclear annihilation. That golden Oscar should be draped in black.

This article has been attacked by Bellingcat, the US-UK deep state-funded cutout. That is an endorsement! (Note, I am routinely attacked by Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins, whose fake journalism in the service of the deep state has been reported on extensively.)

Note the new book The Navalny Case: Conspiracy to serve foreign policy by Jacques Baud, colonel of Swiss intelligence in charge of intelligence on the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War. Read his excellent article about Navalny, who he describes as a far-right anti-ethnic minority racist, “a small cog in a larger project to subvert Russia” and “part of a comprehensive effort to discredit and ultimately to isolate Russia on the international stage.”

He includes evidence that western claims of Novichok poisoning of Navalny are fake: “We know what Russian doctors found in Navalny’s blood and urine, thanks to a photo of a document published by the Russian opposition website Meduza. Since no signs of nerve agent were found, our media simply did not report it!.”

Alexei Navalny: The Real Story

The Downfall of Grozev
By Dutch journalist Eric van de Beek | april 1, 2025

For years, Bulgarian Christo Grozev was a star in the Bellingcat firmament. He rose to head of investigations and appeared in numerous interviews on Dutch TV and elsewhere. In 2023, he suddenly left. This happened after he was discredited for his involvement in a failed Ukrainian attempt to get Russian fighter pilots to defect to the enemy, plane and all.

Grozev was again discredited when, in an interview with Sky News, he justified the bombing of a café in St. Petersburg on April 2, 2023, in which a war reporter was killed and 30 others were injured. The American website The Grayzone reported that this came to the attention of Leslie Aun of the American state agency National Endowment for Democracy, which has funded Bellingcat for years.

Kinderporno-onderzoeker Bellingcat pleegde suïcide na veroordeling kinder­misbruik

Translation of headline above: “Child porn investigator Bellingcat committed suicide after being convicted of child abuse.” The story also reports, “Bellingcat employee Timmi Allen was actually called Olaf Neitsch. There was a reason he had adopted a pseudonym. In a previous life, he worked for the Stasi, the feared secret service of the GDR.”