Boris Nemtsov

That's how he's very different than Putin.

Putin, when faced with the same thing in Georgia, and then most dramatically in Ukraine, has tried to use military force to squash these democratic movements, right? So had Gorbachev been around right now, I think he would have let Ukraine go, or Boris Nemtsov, for that matter, who almost became president in the 90s.

But on the question of the nuclear question, I'm not going to confirm or deny whether there were nuclear weapons there, because I don't know.

I can't remember what's classified in my head and what's not.

Um, you arrived in Moscow in 1991 and stayed until 1994, so you watched the Soviet Union collapse from the inside.

You write about Boris Nemtsov, who went from the young reformist face of the new Russia to an opposition leader murdered a few hundred meters from the Kremlin.

What does his story tell us about the Russia that Western leaders thought they were dealing with?

When, when I arrived in, in, in, in Moscow, it was still the Soviet Union, so as you said, I was there, uh, when the Un- Soviet Union collapsed.

Russia and Serbia, for instance, are quite close, one to the o- from the other.

And when I arrived, I, I h- in the Soviet Union, I saw again a very, very, um, tense situation.

Um, and thank you for mentioning the name of Boris Nemtsov, who was then the governor of the oblast of Nizhny Novgorod, former, formerly, um, w- known, uh, under an- another name because the, the Soviet, um, as, uh, power had changed names like St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod into other names, Gorky in, in the case of Nizhny Novgorod.

And I, I met because I was the first French official coming to this town, which was, uh, closed to foreigners because it was also one of the most important centers of the military industry and research in the Soviet times.

... after you?

Look, would it help to worry? Um, uh, many of my friends have, have paid the ultimate price, like Boris Nemtsov or Alexei Navalny.

Right.

I'm still alive.

I think it was a big mistake.

Right.

Um, um, I also think it might be a miscalculation because, um, I mentioned him and Boris Nemtsov-

Yes, you did.

Eastern Ukraine had already happened.

An opposition, uh, activist or politician called Boris Nemtsov had already been murdered-

Right

...

Drug addiction.

Broke the place.

At the same time, you know, throughout Putin's years there was, you know, Boris Nemtsov, there was Alexei Navalny.

Right.

That's the same year that the journalist, uh, Anna Politkovskaya, uh, ex- who exposed the war in Chechnya is, is shot dead in the lift of her building i- uh, on Putin's birthday, coincidentally.

And then in 2015 you've got the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who's, who's shot four times in the back on a bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin.

In 2018 you've got the Novichok case, which is used on the Skripals in Salisbury, where an English woman, Dawn Sturgess, dies.

And then you, of course, you have the most famous of all, you have Alexei Navalny, uh, Putin's bravest domestic opponent.

You know, Russian journalists had faced increasing pressure at this point.

Uh, an opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, was murdered in the streets near the Kremlin.

Uh, so it's not like it was some sort of, uh, you know, perfectly safe place, but reporters could report.

Even Russian journalists were doing amazing investigations at that point, and foreign journalists were treated as kind of like quasi diplomats.

I think the issue is it's not like it's impossible for people who come after him, for Russia to, you know, one day open up again.

You know, they...

You know, people do sprout up there, like the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny or Boris Nemtsov, who were trying to build a democratic and free Russia, and there was a real demand for that, uh, you know, at the late Soviet period and then the early '90s, and there was an attempt, and the kind of security services with, with Putin took back over.

I wonder, you know, with the state of the world in terms of this conflict that's deepening, this kind of like, you know, maybe not World War III, but a kind of hybrid World War III where we're at, countries don't really in a situation like that decide that they're going to take another stab at liberal democracy.