Alexei Navalny’s heroism spoils Tucker Carlon’s pro-Putin hoedown

Vladimir Putin gives an interview to US talk show host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin.

It was going so well. Fresh from his two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson was spruiking the wonders of the Russian lifestyle, Moscow’s clean, dissident-free streets, cheap groceries and excellent shopping trolleys, with only a slight chance of being on the receiving end of an extrajudicial state-sponsored killing, when Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny spoiled the party by dying in custody.

Perhaps inspired by a boring, subjective history lesson courtesy of Putin where a glazed-eyed Carlson was told Russia had no choice but to invade Ukraine in February 2022, bomb its cities and murder its civilians because the Pechenegs abandoned their siege of Kyiv in AD968 or something, the American commentator hit the streets of Moscow and found Russians are bourgeois just like us Westerners but live in a better part of the world.

“Moscow,” Carlson mused, “is much nicer than any city in my country.”

Not since Paul Hogan threw another shrimp on the barbie have Americans been so forcefully seduced to travel to a foreign land. Marvel at the concrete, the surly locals and the shopping trolleys. Come for the borscht, stay for the compulsory military service.

Russia has moved on from the dark days of communism when the GUM department store shelves heaved with “Out of stock” stickers and the traditional Russian costume of peasant dresses, shawls, knitted socks and sandals made it arguably the worst place in the world to be a transvestite.

To prove this point, Carlson and his production crew popped into the local Perekrestok and filled a trolley full of the weekly Russian grocery fare – beets, boil-in-the-bag gruel and mule sausage – to discover these items were more than half the price of what one might pay in the US.

It seemed churlish to point out the average weekly wage in Russia was one-fifth of that in the US ($357 to $2060), although many did on social media.

Perhaps the oddest moment in the two-hour-long interview came after Carlson predicted an AI empire would be created at some point. Putin replied: “Mankind is currently facing many threats due to the genetic researchers – it is now possible to create this superhuman.

Paul Hogan

Tucker Carlson

A specialised human being. A genetically engineered athlete, scientist, military man. There are reports that Elon Musk has already had the chip implanted in the human brain in the US.”

Were these the rantings of a drooling paranoid autocrat or proof that Terminator has just made it to Moscow’s cinemas?

The travelcade was set to continue with Carlson strolling Moscow’s clean and dissident-free streets when the announcement of the death in custody of Russia’s true opposition leader, Navalny, pooped on the party. Alas, further episodes of Tucker Carlson’s Travels with My Cant (An Idiot Abroad was already taken) have been put on hold for retooling.

Navalny was serving a 19-year jail sentence for “extremism”. Banged up in IK-3, a penal colony in Kharp, north of the Arctic Circle, whose 6000 residents share space with more than 1200 prisoners of the state.

Officially he is said to have gone for a walk, as if he’d just emerged from his cell for a round of golf, and collapsed shortly afterwards. His body has not been released to his parents. Early reports of bruising being found on Navalny’s body have been dismissed. His body will be held for two weeks for “chemical analysis”.

People bring flowers and candles for a vigil in honour of Alexei Navalny.

Navalny previously had been poisoned with the nerve agent novichok, incarcerated, beaten, and tortured. The anti-corruption activist was placed in a coma for three weeks, his internal organs on the verge of collapse. While he recovered, the near death experience must have taken a toll.

Last year, 500 Russian medicos signed an open letter demanding to have Navalny seen by a civilian doctor after the Russian dissident had appeared by videolink in court with a hacking cough and fever amid reports he had to share a cell with an inmate with tuberculosis.

Early last year, Navalny wrote that he was sharing a cell with a man suffering from psychosis. The man would howl “like a demon” for 14 hours a day. Another cellmate would routinely smear faeces all over himself and the cell walls. Torture takes many forms. Putin’s apparatchiks aren’t just efficient with shopping trolley manufacture. Deaths in custody are commonplace in Putin’s Russia. The Russian federal prison system itself estimates there have been between 1500 and 2000 deaths in state custody every year during the past five years. The No. 1 cause invariably is put down to cardiac problems.

After the announcement of Navalny’s death at 47, the crazy brave took to the streets in St Petersburg. There have been more than 200 arrests. In Moscow, mourners have left flowers at prominent places where Navalny uttered speeches calling for free and fair elections and an end to the Putin kleptocracy.

Ultimately, Navalny’s death is a reminder, if one were needed, of the viciously repressive regime Putin oversees. Navalny’s death will hang over next month’s presidential elections in Russia, more obscenity than poll, featuring state-approved grey men in cardboard suits as Putin’s opponents.

Vladimir Putin

Carlson’s performative sycophancy in his sit-down with Putin may have been tolerable, even interesting at times. The truly embarrassing moments came afterwards with Carlson’s role as a travel vlogger on the streets of Moscow. If anything, he has reinforced the stereotype of the gormless American tourist, stumbling around foreign climes, bumping into things.

To be sure, he’s no fool. Carlson understands living standards and salaries in the US and throughout the West put Russia to shame. He claims to be a freedom lover, railing about the oppressive nature of government in the US – but when confronted with an actual repressive regime in action, he smiles forgivingly and goes supermarket shopping.