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Title: The Russian Deep State: Putin & the Assassination of Journalists
Published: 2018-04-19
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lkisg2U9oA
Title: The Russian Deep State: Putin & the Assassination of Journalists
Published: 2018-04-19
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lkisg2U9oA
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Welcome everyone, I'm Spiro, joined with the founder and editor of News Bud, Sibel Edmonds. Hello everyone. Recently we did a report on the Wagner group, it's a private military contractor group, it's sort of like the Russian version of Blackwater operating inside Syria and wouldn't know it just a couple days ago, one of the journalists, one of the top journalists who's been covering the Wagner group, a2/86
Russian journalist was found dead inside Russia. And the other, another journalist, a guy who broke the story on Wagner, he's on the run, he's in hiding. Did they work together, these two journalists, Russian journalists? I don't think so, they worked for different publications. Okay, and these were the two journalists who actually exposed this story because it's a massive story because as we know it's illegal in3/86
Russia to have mercenaries and the private military contractors and they have been trying to cover these things up as you know initially, they even denied any Russians dying during that strike. Then later they came and they said the Russians, they said, oh actually yes, there were these Russians but they were not involved with our military or with our government and now they're even battling there too,4/86
but these two journalists with two different publications inside Russia, they were the ones who exposed this story. The one journalist, his name is Karat Kov, he broke the story on the Wagner group back in 2013. He works for Fontaka, it's a Russian news publication and so he's been reporting on him for a long time. He's a former police officer, he lived in Russia and he was5/86
receiving threats. Recently, as recently as last year, threats directed towards him and so he's basically fled Russia at this point, he's in hiding somewhere, presumably in Europe but we don't know obviously because he's in hiding. Now, what the interesting thing is is this guy's been reporting on the Wagner group for about five years. So while the sudden the threats are coming in now, right? So I6/86
was reading an interview that he gave and he was saying that before whenever he would report on the Wagner group, like you said, it's illegal, it's not supposed to be happening, right? In Russia, well, the authorities would just deny that Wagner even existed. Well recently, he was able to obtain some documents, actual physical documentation of specific Wagner mercenaries. So having this documented evidence, he believes is7/86
the reason behind these threats against him. So what I don't understand is it was exposed in 2013, that's what you're saying here. What I don't understand, why we didn't hear about it all the way till about like a few weeks ago. Why the Western media, you would think they would dive into this story and say, oh look, Russians are doing it as well. But we didn't8/86
hear about this whole Russian mercenary groups and the private contractors business up until a month ago. Did they give any explanation why the story went totally hushed in the West? Well, no, it's an interesting point. I'm glad you brought it up. I think both sides probably have knowledge of covert operations being conducted by the other side. And I don't know why, but it seems like they're9/86
both kind of just sit on the information. I don't know if it's because if one side starts publishing information about the other side, then they're going to retaliate and start to expose each other's operations. I'm not sure about that. And the other thing I have a question on because I don't know the case as well as you know. But you're said as early as 2013. So10/86
this mercenary group was established by then. But were were they because I don't believe Russians really went in there that deep into Syria getting really hands on involved like 2015, 2016. So what was this mercenary company doing for the Russian government and what part of the world? Well, this Wagner group was founded by a former Russian special forces guy. But since it's you can't have private11/86
armies in Russia, they were they founded the company in Argentina. But they were conducting operations in the Ukraine. Yeah, they bring in ex-Russian military guys, ex-special forces guys as well as Ukrainian nationals. And they were involved in the conflict that took what was going on for years there in the Ukraine. That's where they're mainly known for their operations is the Ukraine and the now Syria. A12/86
lot of the people who were fighting in Ukraine actually have since traveled to Syria. And I mean, they're hired guns at this point. So the journalist that is it being investigated in Russia right now as we speak? Yes, it is. Now the the journalist he died on April 15th, just a couple days ago. And he died after being in a coma for a few days. As13/86
we said, he fell off his balcony is what investigators are saying. They're saying that it's either an accident or a suicide at this point. They're saying there's no evidence of foul play. And they believe that's because the door was locked from the inside and there was no sign of a struggle. Now that just sure the story receives coverage. Their expose, their report suddenly, internationally. It brings14/86
the Russian government to this point where they even have to come out and kind of semi admit and then lo and behold, we have a journalist dying mysteriously falling down from his whatever floor apartment building flat in Russia. And we have the other journalists receiving all these threats. And he has to basically leave Russia and go and find some place to hide. So I would say15/86
accident, not very likely, but also if you go and look at the track records of Putin, Russia with assassinating and murdering journalists. You are you're going to be looking at a very, very nasty, nasty list. We're going to be providing, of course, our viewers with a list of articles and reports. And some of these reports, they are listing all the investigative journalists, the good ones, okay,16/86
the good ones in Russia, who have been assassinated and poisoned. One of the most famous case that I was following years ago, this would be about 12 years ago, was the case of Anna Poletkovskaja. And this lady, this journalist was one of those bulldog journalists in Russia. And in 1990s and early 2000, she did some amazing work in Russia exposing corruption within Putin's administration. She was17/86
covering heavily covering the Chechnya conflict. And a lot of human rights abuses by Russia targeting the Chechen minority in the region. And this woman, she was threatened with rape and this is by Putin's forces. She, they couple of times they tried to poison her. And then finally in 2006, as she was, and we are talking about Anna Poletkovskaja. And again, we're going to be providing these18/86
links. As she was writing a book exposing Putin and his oligarch private group with hundreds of millions of dollars and their corruption cases and FSB, she was murdered. She was assassinated inside the elevator in her Moscow apartment. So she went into the elevator and someone got in there right behind her and that person the assassin shot her four times, twice in the chest, once in the19/86
head. And they killed her. They assassinated her. And even though, and another interesting thing here is this happened on the birthday of Putin. And up until that point, like this journalist, you mentioned, Spiro, she kept telling people that she was getting death threats from FSB, from certain military operatives in Russia and that she was concerned for her life. But most importantly, she was saying that she20/86
was concerned for the lives of her sources, her informants who were giving her all this information, documented information in Russia. And I have to read this paragraph. And this is shortly before she was assassinated in Russia. She's saying here, we are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet where information21/86
is still freely available for the rest. If you want to go on working as a journalist, it's a total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial, whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs see fit. And she delivered this speech before CPJ or one of the journalistic organizations, international and shortly after she was assassinated. Inside her own elevator, and of course22/86
they caught some patsy people there. They put them in jail. Then they said the statute of limitation was up and they never found out who ordered the assassination. And the fact that it was carried out as she was writing an expose, a book on Putin, as she was writing that book, she got assassinated on Putin's birthday. And there are dozens, as I said, we're going to23/86
be providing the links for our readers, for our viewers. And they can take a look at all these unsolved cases of dozens of journalists, the real journalists, being poisoned, being gone down in Russia, since Putin came into power around the early 2000. And the list is mind boggling, another famous case is Igor Domnikov. And again, he was a Russian journalist and editor for special topics involving24/86
business corruption. And he was also pursuing some of Putin's connections. And he was murdered in 2000. And I have to read it here. Although some individuals were convicted of the attack in 2007, the suspected mastermind Sergei Dorovsky, an ex-government official from Lepetsk region, was never convicted as a statute of limitation on the case had expired. Of course, I mean, you see that as a repeating theme,25/86
Domnikov was attacked outside of his Moscow apartment. See, that's interesting. The journalists we are talking about, the new case, it's from his own apartment unit. And we had, of course, Anna's murder assassination in the apartment in Moscow inside the elevator and same thing with Igor Domnikov. And by several men, wielding hammers, Domnikov was hit on the head repeatedly, which knocked him unconscious. Due to the injuries26/86
sustained in the initial beating, Igor was sent to Bordenko Institute where he remained in a coma until his death two months later. Nobody really got truly convicted of this crime. They never found out who ordered the hit. I think this is a very important topic to talk about in more macro terms because we all know that we are seeing less and less real investigative journalists. The27/86
ones working with the mainstream media, they have to maneuver within the parameters established by the government, by the deep state. And then we also have tons of junks, I'm saying it again, junk, junkie, outlets that they're not really engaged in journalism, actual journalism. What they do is basically they take, cut and paste other people's work or they just sit down and write fictions. I'm not saying28/86
they're all bad, they are some really good, solid alternative journalists as well, we have them. But Russia is not behind the US when it comes to trepidning journalists assassinating them and basically quashing any dissent or real investigative journalism work. Not only that Russia is not behind, I would say Russia is way ahead of the United States. I mean, how many cases can we think of here29/86
in the United States of investigative journalists granted, we don't have many of them who are willing to truly challenge the deep state and the government who have had questionable murders or deaths. I mean, I can't think of a, of course, Michael Hastin case. And you mentioned before we started recording Gary Webb's case still is right in the middle because he shot himself for his suicide twice30/86
and twice in the head before he completed that suicide mission and he died. But when you compare it with Putin and Russia, well, you're looking at maybe six times, ten times, twenty times more in terms of actually going trepidning and assassinating journalists. And with that, at this point, I think we should ask those people who have rabies and they're like side takers. I don't know why31/86
it's so popular here in the US. Everything is treated like a football team. You either take this side and then cheer only for this side and boo and attack the other side or you do it the other way around. You do one side. Where does it come from? It's truly mind boggling. It's very rare to come across people who sit in the middle, they observe, they32/86
criticize when they are things to criticize on each side and stay kind of neutral. But no, we must have teams. I am taking a team. And now we are seeing this major divide among this pro-Russian or the pro-U.S. government or pro-West of France. And in the West, so they're like, everything Putin does, great, parade, woo! Just cheer everyone and everything West does is absolutely awful or33/86
switch them around. RT for example. Are you going to see any of these murder stories, assassinations, investigations by state-owned publications in Russia such as Sputnik, such as RT, such as Probda? Have you seen many stories investigating these cases, Spiro on RT? Let's say the popular one. It's interesting you mentioned that. No, I haven't, but I haven't specifically looked. After we get done here, I'm going to34/86
go ahead and search both of those sites. There may be because it's receiving international coverage, there may be a little headlines, they're saying it's under investigations. But as far as investigative journalism is concerned, absolutely. I am ready to wage a bet here. I'm not a gambling woman, but I am ready to wage a bet that we will not find any thorough investigative reporting on these cases35/86
because it didn't happen with any of the other cases. There are dozens of journalists. And these journalists, none of them were with RT, none of them were with Sputniks. These were with smaller journalistic organizations. And these were the real investigative journalists, I would say more independent, who were looking into corruption, malfeasance, all sorts of malpractices by Putin's administrations, whether it's military, whether it's FSB, their intelligence36/86
services. See, you will never find those on RT. RT, they want to put the focus on our crap, excuse my language. This is what the US is doing and sometimes they do good work. I'm not saying they don't do good work, but their whole guideline says, Dow shall not report on the stuff that are negative and bad on Russia. Well, that was the difference. Really, what37/86
is the difference between the mainstream media and the US we are attacking or UK and the Russian mainstream media? Do you see any difference here? Well, no, and they're not going to bite the hand that feeds them. They are being sponsored funded by the government. Like you said, it's a state sponsored program, just like many of the western programming here, it's all, they have an agenda38/86
and it's apparent and it's obvious. And like you said, they're not going to do anything unless they're forced to and unless they have to, you know, and then they'll kind of dance around it at best. But... Well, the same thing I'm seeing during the wartime reporting by RT. And that is, for example, when our awful strikes kill 150 civilians, it is right there front page RT39/86
headline bold. US strike calls 150 that civilian that's here are the pictures of the children that's awful and I'm not saying it's inaccurate reporting, it's accurate. Now it's interesting because when the Russian forces, let's say accidentally even, they cause deaths in hospitals, civilian casualties and there was a recent 132 people died as a result of Russian air strike. Again, I'm not saying it was purposefully hitting40/86
the civilians there. You couldn't find anything on the front page of RT or Spatnik. And even some of the other publications, it would be like on B12 pages. It's never there as the headlines. It's so important for people to keep this in mind, okay? Trying to get informed as hard as it may be with all the information bombardment we have, taking sides and say, I'm going41/86
to buy into everything this publication or this country or this president says. And I'm not going to listen to anything this other publication from this other country says it's just the path towards complete ignorance and it just fosters bias and that's what it does. And that's one of the things we don't do. Our subscribers, our viewers who follow my aggregated news that I published several times42/86
a week 30 plus links, they see that I do have some articles from RT and these are good articles, they are talking about the currency war between China, Russia and the US or they are talking about a certain whistleblower from US that doesn't get any coverage, who doesn't get any coverage here. I cover Spatnik, I cover RT, I pick some articles from guardians that are legit43/86
but I don't do this game of, I'm going to broadcast, we're going to broadcast at news but everything Russia because Putin is the hero, that's another thing, this hero finding complex that people have in the West. Well, I mean, between that and like you're saying, the polarization which we are seeing on a scale, I don't think we've seen before, everything's just growing exponentially, especially when you44/86
take into consideration the internet and social media and how all this information spreads so quickly. But I think it really boils down to social engineering, I mean we are bombarded with these choices, you have to choose a side, Sebel, do you like Coke or Pepsi, do you like Republicans or Democrats, it left, right? I mean, I understand that everything in the universe has an opposite but45/86
at the same time they're trying so hard to get us to have that wedge in between us, it's the divide and conquer strategy and it's working beautifully. Absolutely and you know, it's a very lonely place, our position, being in the middle, not being Republican or Democrats, as you said, not being liberal or diss, not being proputing, we die for you, we love you Putin or all46/86
we are so pro-Trump, that just tells you how little the base is because look, we cover something on, on, on, let's say, President Trump, okay, whether it's Kurt Nemo or one of our other producers and then we get these people who cancel subscriptions, they're like, oh, I thought you guys love, you know, MAGA and Trump, I can't believe you just criticized him, damn you, we are47/86
leaving you and we go like, okay, bye bye, has the labista baby and then a week later we are doing something and we are exposing Putin, I like it how Professor Kovacovitch reports to him as the oligarch of all oligarchs and the way he puts it, you know, he has lived in Russia, he has thought in Russia, he has gotten degrees there but when he gives48/86
his analysis, he's not kissing Putin's butt because once then we take sides, then even when we see things that we agree, it's wrong, it's like, I don't want to eat crores, you know, I'm gonna still stand by what I said. So we don't want to do that, we don't do that. I had a couple of people from the Hader side saying, oh, Sebel Edmunds is saying49/86
RT is bad because she's not giving, being given prominence in RT and one of the things we are going to do here is I have collected all the invites I have received from RT in the past two and a half years and this is more than a dozen of email invitations asking me to give interviews, asking me to provide analysis. In the past two and a50/86
half, three years I have been rejecting all the interview requests, I don't have anything against RT saying, oh, they are evil, as I said, they do some good work. One reason for that is the time limitation. I mean, we are running our own news organizations and it's so hard for us to even find time to do our own recording and report in our own investigator work.51/86
But the other reason is, especially since we are covering Syria and some of these issues, I am not gonna go on RT because it's extremely biased, okay. It is 100% state owned. They report directly to Kremlin, they can't report anything that Kremlin doesn't put the stamp of approval. I don't go on MPR either. I don't accept any interview requests. Now, I don't get dozens of interview52/86
requests from Fox News, but even when I get it, I politely, I say, no, thank you. I don't have time. And right now I don't want to provide interviews or analysis for your publication. Again, I'm not saying they are evil. All I'm saying is I, I, and as you see these emails, they come every time there is an issue on Turkey, on Syria, on whistleblowers, on53/86
police, the state practices here in the US. These are the areas within, you know, my expertise to a certain degree. So they reach out and I'm thankful and I'm grateful, but I decline. So putting this thing and saying, oh, poo-poing because, because they don't give any prominence to news, but I hope we can go ahead and put that straight out there too. I have declined dozens54/86
of interview requests by RT and the fact that as news, but we do not take sides, okay. I don't think any decent journalistic channel can report really good without, uh, with, by taking sides because that is called bias. And of course, there are different levels of bias, extreme level of bias, milder level of bias, but we don't do that. And, uh, as, as I was saying,55/86
you will not see investigative journalists from Russia who can provide reports freely, including what happened with what we've seen with Wagner groups, because if there are, they're going to get killed. And you will see that in some of the links that we provide poisoning, bullets, being thrown down balconies, being beaten to death with pipes, but it just doesn't happen. You can't engage in investigative journalism inside56/86
Russia and anyone who wants to come and say, that is wrong. I will show them the lists. I will show now almost a thick encyclopedia of what happens to any journalist who tries, who even attempts to engage in investigative journalism. Yeah, I mean, uh, Russia has the highest, uh, body count. If you want to call it that, of, of investigative journalism, of course, there is, you57/86
know, they, I'm sure they haven't gotten all of them. I'm sure there's still people in Russia doing good, good work. Uh, it's very dangerous, very risky. Uh, I mean, it's one of the most dangerous countries to do journalism. And it's not even a war country. I mean, there's no current war taking place. Same thing, same thing with Turkey as well. You know, the, since the attempted