Photo: Getty

EA on Times Radio: Week in Review — Putin-Navalny; Ukraine; AI…and Beyoncé Goes Country

UPDATES: Alexei Navalny Is Dead, Possibly Assassinated, In A Russian Prison

In a 35-minute special with Times Radio’s Frontline, I link Vladimir Putin’s killing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to the failure of Putin’s gamble with his two-year invasion of Ukraine.

I explain the Putin paradox: trying to project strength, he tips off weakness with his imprisonment of Navalny — an activist who had little support within Russia, according to the Kremlin — in the Arctic Circle in inhumane conditions.

Host James Hanson and I analyze the political, economic, and social situation in Russia.

We then turn to a second paradox in Ukraine. while the Kremlin’s propaganda — amplified by many activists and media outlets in the West — is that there is a “stalemate” or even Russia’s impending triumph. But the reality far beyond the frontline is of Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s navy, airbases, and oil refineries, breaking Moscow’s blockade of the Black Sea and unsettling the Kremlin.

Thus Putin’s final gamble, the “information war” to scuttle international support for Kyiv — because if that international support continues, the Russian leader is likely to face further problems, if not defeat, at home.