‘A particularly valuable agent’

Pro-Kremlin TV channel airs segment claiming Navalny is a German spy

Russia’s state television has all but ignored Alexey Navalny’s return from Germany. But that hasn’t stopped the pro-Kremlin channel “NTV” from offering its own take. On Monday, January 18, the network ran a seven-minute segment on its program “Emergency” (“Chrezvychaynoe Proisshestvie” in Russia, or “ChP” for short), which included claims that Navalny is a German intelligence agent and that Berlin wanted to get rid of him. Here’s what “NTV” had to say about Navalny’s return to Moscow, in brief.

“Justice for all” is one of the points of Navalny’s program and it came for him at last: the Russian authorities demonstrated the principle of the inevitability of punishment. Navalny is a particularly valuable agent for the German intelligence services; he was even brought to the airport in a car with a flashing light. He was no longer his own, he did everything according to the demands of German intelligence. There were no interviews at the airport, so as not to blurt out too much about his patrons. He’s unlikely to forget this flight — dozens of cameras recorded his every move. He probably even felt like a politician. At Vnukovo International Airport the blogger’s admirers raged and shouted over the fans of Olga Buzova. The loudest were detained — including Lyubov Sobol, who came to get her share of the PR scandal. This wasn’t a return, but essentially an extradition: Germany realized that Russia would demand an extradition and decided to get rid of Navalny. There are many complaints against the blogger, from several departments at once. His arrest is a completely natural result. Those who are deciding Navalny’s fate consider the blogger a write off. Now his wife will take the lead, following the example of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. By the way, Tikhanovskaya herself has already expressed her support for him, as did another downed pilot — Juan Guaidó.

You can watch NTV’s full segment on Navalny here.

Summary by Grigory Levchenko

Translation by Eilish Hart