Follow-up to 'Redacted' interview on the death of Navalny

I am pleased to share the link which I have just received from the hosts of the ‘Redacted’ news and analysis platform.  This is a follow-up to my interview on the same subject which was put on line over this past weekend and has now been seen by over 320,000 visitors to the Redacted account on youtube.

What is new and led Natali Morris to reopen the issue was the announcement a day ago by the head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, that Navalny died of natural causes, namely from a blood clot. She remarks that the Ukrainians are thus agreeing with what the Russian government said following their autopsy of Navalny.

The reason for Budanov’s remark to a journalist was to counter accusations that some, myself included, have made about Ukrainian involvement in the foul deed acting on orders from their British curators.  Of course, the Russians also push the story of an embolism to account for Navalny’s death, to exculpate themselves.  But two white lies are no substitute for the truth.

What is noteworthy in all this, per Natali Morris, is that this new story of natural causes works directly against the narrative put out by all Western leaders and journalists immediately following news of Navalny’s death, that Putin ordered the murder. She suggests that the CIA changed their narrative when it did not gain traction and they decided to move on to the next task of installing Navalny’s successor, whoever that might be, so as to proceed at once to disrupting the Russian presidential elections in March.  

Basing myself on what last night’s Solovyov talk show had to say about Budanov and his meeting with journalists, there are many open questions that will keep analysts busy for weeks to come.

I think it fair to identify Budanov as a CIA asset, so that his identification of ‘natural causes’ has the blessing of Washington now. Meanwhile, at the same chat with journalists Budanov also explicitly contradicted President Zelensky’s announcement earlier in the day that total Ukrainian deaths so far in the war are 31,000.  Per Budanov, there have been 500,000 deaths and that can be easily verified from space by watching the filling of cemeteries with new graves across all of Ukraine.

Let us remember that when the senior general of the Ukrainian army Zaluzhny was about to be fired there was widespread speculation that his replacement would be Budanov. The reason was that Budanov has been far more successful in arranging sabotage and political assassinations behind Russian lines than Zaluzhny had been in directing the summer’s counter-offensive.  For Budanov to directly discredit his President’s remarks on the all-important issue of war deaths suggests to me that there is a fierce power struggle now going on in Kiev, in which CIA bets are on Budanov and against Zelensky.

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©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024