British journalist John Sweeney, author of a biographical book on Vladimir Putin, believes that “no one will be safe” while the Russian president remains in power, and warns that the war in Ukraine is a lesson in democracy.
“I think what the Ukrainians are teaching us is that democracy must be defended, freedom of expression is not offered. And I think we should pay attention to what is happening in Ukraine,” Sweeney told Agência Lusa, on the subject. from the release of the book “Assassin in the Kremlin” [“Assassino no Kremlin”].
“For too long we have lived too comfortably and become a bit ‘zombified’. But Russia is a threat. As long as Putin is in power, no one is safe. We have to deal with it,” says Sweeney, who was in kyiv when Russia launched the military offensive on Ukraine on February 24.
Billed as an “explosive account of Putin’s reign of terror,” the book is the result of the former spy and now president’s 22-year span since the war in Chechnya in the 2000s, when he says he saw “evidence of war crimes of the Russian Army.
In 2014, he traveled to Siberia and questioned the Russian president for the BBC, asking him about “the deaths in Ukraine”, referring to the shooting down of the MH17 plane, in which 298 people died.
The Malaysia Airlines plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed after being hit by a missile while flying over eastern Ukraine during the conflict that culminated in the annexation of Crimea.
“There is no doubt that MH17 was blown up in the sky by the Russian military,” despite denials from Moscow, says Sweeney, who investigated the crash for the British public station.
Putin responded, blaming kyiv for not wanting a “substantial political dialogue with the east of the country”. Months later, Russia supported the breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and annexed the Crimean peninsula.
In 2018, Sweeney returned to the subject by investigating the relations with Putin of the Russian oligarchs who frequented the United Kingdom and the connections in the Kremlin of businessman Arron Banks, one of Nigel Farage’s allies and financier during the Brexit referendum.
More recently, he wrote about the close relationship between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Russian spy Alexander Lebedev, whose son Evgeny, owner of the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers, entered the House of Lords as Baron Lebedev of Hampton in Richmond. London, on the Thames, and Siberia, in the Russian Federation.”
The book includes information used for all these works and also for the “Talking about Putin” podcast. [“Falando sobre Putin”]that Sweeney launched in February with crowdfunding [crowdfunding] from Kyiv
Since leaving the BBC in 2019, Sweeney, 64, has continued as a freelance journalist and the author of several books, which has also given him more freedom.
The new book traces Putin’s journey through people who knew him, experts and opponents alike, and includes several unproven theories, from the illness that allegedly afflicts Vladimir Putin to rumors of pedophilia and bisexuality.
Regarding the much talked about facial deformation of the Russian president, he suggests that it may be the result of an excess of steroids, as happened with John F. Kennedy due to treatments for Addison’s disease, which will have an increased aggression as a side effect.
But that doesn’t mean Putin has gone mad, he crumples, remembering the conversation with a psychiatrist.
“He’s bad, but not crazy. He doesn’t have voices in his head, he doesn’t have hallucinations,” he argues, adding that “it’s good news because it means he’s not going to attack us with nuclear bombs.”
Before invading Ukraine, Putin had already launched attacks against the international order and Western democracies, and the suspicion of the book’s influence on ‘Brexit’ remains, despite the fact that several British official investigations found no evidence.
“None of this research was of good quality. The ones who can really know are [os serviços de inteligência britânicos] MI6 and they were not asked to investigate,” he told Lusa, claiming the ruling Conservative Party is not interested.
Regarding Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he gives credit for the confrontation between Russia and Putin “on February 24”, but criticizes previous relations with the oligarchs, specifically attending parties at Lebedev’s mansion in Italy.
“The relationship with the Lebedevs is inappropriate. Alexander Lebedev was from the KGB and [o KGB] It’s like the Hotel California”, he says in reference to the song of the Eagles, who sang that “you can never leave”.
Source: TSF
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
