since august the twenty fifth a classified memo by the us democrats has been released two weeks after president donald trump blocked it due to security concerns it rebuts a document prepared by republicans on the house intelligence committee the memo released earlier this month alleges f.b.i. bias against truck during his investigation into his presidential campaigns links with russia more than half a dozen high profile u.s. corporations are cutting ties with the national rifle association following last week's shooting at a florida high school they say they'll no longer offer discounts to the n.r.a. five million members it follows a social media campaign by gun control activists calling for a boycott on brands who partnered with the organization that extra soldiers have been deployed in the search for more than one hundred nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by boko haram on monday angry parents say the government has failed to protect their children the abductions in the town of duck she casts doubt on the

government's claims that it's defeated the armed group of course you can follow all of those stories by logging onto our website at al-jazeera dot com back with more news in a half an hour next on al-jazeera it's up front do stay with us. news has never then more available but the message is simplistic and misinformation is rife listening post provides a critical counterpoint challenging mainstream media narrative at this time on al-jazeera. did lot of putin help donald trump win the us presidential election and how free and fair is russia's own presidential election next month going to be the last one of putin's leading opponents and speak to a former top cia spy. i marry her son russian leader vladimir putin will run for president again next month

in what is sure to be a guaranteed victory given that is only viable opponent has been barred from running so we'll putin be president for life or is there a version of russian democracy that exists in spite of him that's our debate but first did putin's russia collude with donald trump during the twenty six thousand us presidential election former f.b.i. chief robert mueller who's investigating that claim last week indicted thirteen russians and three russian organizations but did the campaign participate in the election meddling and should the u.s. really be lecturing russia on undermining foreign elections given how many governments the cia has undermined and even toppled this week's headlines from critic former top spy and twenty eight year veteran of the cia and its clandestine service john seifert. thanks for joining me on up front the latest indictments from the special counsel's investigation into the twenty sixteen presidential election in the u.s.

accuses russian nationals and organizations of having allegedly meddled in the election are you of the view as many people seem to be in the u.s. these days that the trump campaign colluded with russia and was involved in that meddling were interesting my view is this this indictment sets a foundation upon which the legal community the justice department and the and the more investigation will then look for coconspirators. that were tied with this. you know the the russians when they do these things they call the active measures so its intelligence services collect intelligence but the russians have always for their history been very good at subversion and this information deception and they also recruit spies to help them do that that's the if you believe they recruited members of the trauma campaign as part of this alleged campaign i have i have no way i have no way of knowing that but one thing i can say do you believe i'm asking for your belief i can say with certainty that they would try his critics that donald trump the president of the states will be indicted as a conspirator will be going to charged with

a crime whether it is conspiracy treason that's the hope of many of his critics they point to his behavior they point to some of the evidence emerging from the special counsel do you believe from what you've seen in the public domain from what you've heard from behind the scenes as a cia veteran do you believe there is a case at least for suggesting donald trump may have colluded with russia i actually do believe there is a case for that. you know if we're talking about collusion you know we've seen recently for with the stormy daniels affair for example is the porn star who gave it to paid off mr trump's behavior puts him in a position where he could be blackmailed or put himself in trouble so what we have here is we have the best service in the world at blackmail and using these kind of things to take advantage of people rushing into russia because we have someone who uniquely put themselves in a position where they could be blackmailed or extorted then what we've seen is behavior by people around the trump campaign some of whom have been arrested others that have their information has come out to show what they've done then take

another step further. when these people are confronted with that they say they had no connection lied about it and then tried to cover it up and then one step further . trumpeters people attack those very institutions that could hold them accountable so in my view this is not the behavior of people who are wholly innocent. but isn't the problem that there is no hard evidence so far where over a year into this administration there is no actual hard evidence despite all the media hype all the coverage all the testimonies in congress there is no hard evidence or smoking gun linking either trump or his campaign. to the rushing over espionage organizations the espionage activities are meant to be kept secret so. no there is no evidence evidence is something that legal people find to put into a trial the bar for evidence is very high however the bar for what we've seen in terms of politically bad behavior and unethical behavior in unpatriotic behavior

has been met on you wanted to come across as a bit of a conspiracy theorist because you say well the russians are great at this they're great at spin on that grounds you could accuse them of anything and say well they're great at covering their tracks you see what i mean there's no limit to what you can i do do so you mean and i do acknowledge that we don't have evidence to go to a court i said we've seen behavior it's either an ethical unpatriotic and there should be a political price for it to pay for that type of stuff you say unethical unpatriotic behavior but on the other hand if he is this russian stooge or if he is compromised by russian intelligence why then did he for example put out a new nuclear strategy calling for more nukes and treating russia as a major rival why has he supported more troops being sent to poland why has he sold more arms to ukraine than the obama administration and how do you explain the personally i think those things are great and i think that's exactly the type of activity that we have to take to make it clear to mr putin why he can't do it if he's a if he's compromised by russian intelligence or truly that's evidence that he's

not you know i don't know on that in the white house i do think that the deep state that he talks about and the people with the professionals who work in the f.b.i. in the defense department and cia in that in the director of national intelligence these people understand what the russians have been doing what the russians are up to in have been promulgating policies that i think are good for our country and i think we're seeing some of that now just one last question on the kind of hacking alleged hacking the response by trumped intelligence chiefs including trump's own cia director mike pompei of warned that the twenty eighteen midterm elections could be targeted by russian intelligence as well and a lot of people are criticizing trump for not proposing countermeasures or some kind of defensive measures were. what would you want to see as a response to what you believe is russian meddling in the election are you calling for a kind of counter cyber war count to meddling in the russian elections all out military confrontation where to end the actions that mr putin took those active measures that i talked about these are asymmetric warfare it's part of their doctrine and it's this asymmetric warfare is the is the doctrine of the weak against the strong

it's like terrorism you can't take on the united states head on if you don't have the means to do so this is a means of looking for weaknesses in the american system and taking advantage of those things therefore the way to deal with those is to is to put pressure on putin to make clear what's acceptable and what's not expression. i think continuing to support arms to ukraine making it clear there is a price to pay in his area right near abroad where he's taken advantage in crimea and ukraine i do believe that nuclear posture of increasing our weapons systems of our nuclear weapons systems i think this all makes sense i think continuing to develop relations and with our nato partners to push back i also think there's a whole education issue that has to be done here the critics of trouble yourself that as you say he's doing those things no i'm saying much worse than i'm saying on the one hand you say he's on i think he may be unpatriotic you clearly not a fan of him as an individual but you're also saying let's give him more nukes and

escalate possibly a nuclear war with russia in the future that's not what i said because this is simply this disconnect lots of people say we don't trust we don't trust you might be russian stooges clearly off his head but we think he should escalate a conflict with russia and i say no it isn't seems to be a contradiction well the united states already has the largest most powerful military in the history of the world we have the largest arsenals of knowing what you want to give up and even more possibility of modernizing those weapons but you're also talking about up and making putin pay a price all of those things could lead to another major war could it not but you do countries that do and you're ok with donald trump being president. you're you're doing what trump and putin do is you create. so you can take it down i will use it you said we should pay could pay a price in ukraine and you support modernization an increase in nuclear weapons as i'm saying how does that square with you saying you don't trust donald trump i don't trust between to trust him with more weapons but i do matter and what i think a fight with i do trust the institutions in this country that are inviting mr trump going against the let's talk about one of those institution to see it. for twenty

eight years in the central intelligence agency where former senior member you were part of the u.s. clandestine service do you see the irony in sitting here criticizing russia for trying to interfere in foreign elections given how many foreign elections the cia has intervened in given how many foreign governments the cia has toppled iran nine hundred fifty three guatemala nine hundred fifty four brazil one hundred sixty four bolivia nine hundred seventy one chile nine hundred seventy three one thousand nine hundred ninety one the list goes on and on down on this and i'm not going to apologize for being an american i support did not support this country in this most of this country's policies and in those cases some of them i will admit were mistakes the president the united states pushed the cia to get him involved in in the cia follows the orders of the president ited states however there is a system here by which those people are working on behalf the constitution there's congressional oversight there is advice and consent to the president and to the

white house and people involved in these things in russia those services are working on behalf of a single man that single man makes those decisions for them i'm saying a some of the cia to talk about foreign interference when you guys meddled you guys plural not just you meddled in other countries elections does it not seem a bit rich jim woolsey former head of the cia was on fox news this past week and lawful about it when he was yeah we intervened we did it for a good call i'm sure the russians would say the same we're doing it for good reasons as well i totally understand that appears that way and what i would ask you to look at is look at mr putin look at his what he's trying to push the. he's pushing supporting taliban in afghanistan and he's supporting assad in syria to include the use of chemical weapons he's overtaken neighboring countries and took a crimea from ukraine so i do think there are issues in there are things that are right in wrong in the world and i think mr putin's on the wrong side if we want to talk about the stakes in american foreign policy we don't have time today to go

through all of those there's plenty of them i studied many would say they were just mistakes they were crimes for which people have not been held accountable. that i'm sure there were some absolutely john thanks for joining me on that front my pleasure thank you. on march eighteenth russians will go to the polls to decide who will become their next president but just how fair and democratic will that vote be the past of the kremlin for russian opposition candidates is notoriously dangerous in twenty fifteen opposition leader boris nemtsov was killed and this year the main challenger to president vladimir putin's rule alexina valley has been barred from even running so is russia today more of a dictatorship than a democracy and looked as the sitting president and former k.g.b. spy vladimir putin what for himself and for his country with me to discuss all of this our yevgenia albats editor in chief of the new times in moscow vladimir pozner a prominent russian american journalist and former soviet union spokesman i'm glad

to meet current mirza a leading russian opposition figure an activist thank you all for joining me on upfront given there are a presidential elections around the corner i want to begin by asking whether russia whether russia these days can really be classed as a democracy a lot of people say you know a lot of it positive. partially you could say that there are some democratic ilam elements today in russia but i would hesitate to call it a democracy it's got a long way to go before it becomes a democracy if it becomes a democracy so yes more than joining soviet times but still not really the marcus either way i understand one you have good news is that if you show is an accurate description you know by any means as much as i respect the idea of a pause not i would say that it's impossible to call russia a democracy it's not a democracy it's not a didn't take the ship either there are it is a it is

a country which is run by a corporation the graduates of the former political polish the k.g.b. and what we're going to have on my couch eighteenth two thousand and eighteen has nothing to do with election. there will be no action no there are no actions there was no choice it's just the right point. for the fourth. and lot of my karma is a you wrote an article recently saying western leaders should recognize russia's election should give it a quote international seal of approval. well when we speak about elections in russia we have to put the word in quotation marks because for more than eighteen years now we've not had a free and fair and democratic election in our country and you don't have to take my word for it just look at all the reports by oversea observers and council of europe observers who have monitored russian elections in these past two decades and it's frankly very puzzling when every time we've had elections again so-called

elections in our country we have observers coming in from the o.s.c. from the council of europe from democratic nations and these observers are rushing this absolutely damning reports that there's no real competition there's no real choice these are not real elections and yet a few hours after these observers from western countries are those reports the leaders of those same western countries the democratically elected presidents and prime ministers pick up the phone and call mr putin to congratulate him to congratulate him on what in effect on the successful theft of the votes and i was speaking about this so-called presidential election that will take place on the eighteenth of march we can discuss for a long time all the different ways and methods the kremlin has mustered in terms of manipulating and controlling the electoral process but i think frankly it is enough to mention just one fact there were two prominent opposition leaders who are planning to challenge a lot of my putin for the presidency in two thousand and eighteen one was boris nemtsov the former russian deputy prime minister the most recognizable face of the russian democratic opposition who will not be on the ballot next month because he

was killed almost three years ago in the bridge in front of the kremlin and the second challenger is the anti corruption activist accent of irony who spend the last year campaigning all across the country drawing hundreds and thousands of people at rallies everywhere he went and he's not going to be on about it because the russian authorities. deliberately disenfranchised him with a politically motivated court conviction that was by the way overturned already by the european court of human rights but it still sent his grandson a son from china sam it is not difficult to win an election when your opponents are not actually on the ballot and when it went up playing to a lot of the polls and if it's not that difficult to win an election when your opponents on the ballot but what's the point of the election is it just for international approval is it just a kind of give some kind of stiglitz a legitimacy if there's no choice if there's this manipulation is get near and vladimir caramel is a pointing out what's the point of these elections. before i answer that question i'd like to make a point myself when i was asked to participate in this program i said i was not

interested in getting into a debate i am not a debater i'm a journalist i'm not an opposition i'm not a pro i'm not a big fan of putin's but i like to try to be objective with all due respect mr carden was as you said is an active opposition person and so he again yelled butts in which he does in her magazine i'm simply not interested in that kind of discussion it's very clear what they're going to say probably pretty clear what i'm going to say because people don't do go to the polls and they do and for whatever reasons putin has a very high percentage of support and it's not because people are stupid as i or i say again i'm not a putin supporter but i do have to see things the way they are or you describe them the way you want them to be or want people to believe them to be it's not a discussion i'm interested in. so i think what i'm going to do is you know let the two people talk and agree with each other on all the negative things that they're

going to say and i'll do some other stuff that is much more interesting for me so i'm going to thank you for the opportunity but that's about it i really have no interest in participating in this this is an ideological debate and i'm no longer interested in ideas that you're going to look at if you want to know about it just out of interest. well what i think unfortunate with all the respect for mr posner as professionally as i did not from have to say there is in russian media in all its various guises and soviet in the ninety's and today i think that is the actually the basic point about the people who are either open putin supporters or who pretend to be objective but who are in fact putin supporters that they always run of a run away from genuine debate so just to clarify for of who has we had a guest a lot of opposed to joining us from london is a well known russian journalist here to try and express a different view to vladimir kara who is an opposition activist and you have get the alberts who is an independent journalist in moscow he's decided to leave others

let me go to yevgenia albats in moscow and let me ask you this when you hear. people like vladimir pozner who's now departed this show say your ideologues your opposition figures you know what's your response to the. you know i'm most surprised because what you want to force now is a very experienced a very professional journals and he himself. spent quite some time working as a service propaganda mouth piece during the soviet times and he himself denied that it was going to prom was a lot of has his own show on channel won which belongs to all of the state and which is unfortunately is just not a propaganda machine. to. to

mislead russian people getting a lot of people watching i understand his will a lot of people line might wonder what how it is that in a country where we hear there's so much propaganda and crackdowns on the press how does someone let you operate then you seem to be running a magazine you'll hear you're speaking from moscow speaking freely to me now and to our audience about what's going on how does that how does that all fit together. it is very difficult r r m like it was on the soviet union russia has looked at the threat of terror and stayed so are they also for some opposition voices to exist i had however are to close the paper are of my magazine because people are aware fraid i'm still afraid to give our for our ads because to abse to the new times magazine them are was to publicly express your support to

their position that's a quote. from a prominent russian oligarchs whom i couldn't name so therefore are where writing on various small budgets the mag's anomalies only digit though and. most likely will go out of business in months to come let me put that point of lot of karen missouri who's here with me you've been targeted you say by the russian government you've i think not once but twice attacks on your life in the form of poisonings you say that you had to leave the country when you oppose him so how does the opposition figure survive in putin's russia if as you say people like yourself are targeted well first of all it's not what i say that's the official doctor's diagnosis from my moscow hospital both times that it was cute intoxication of an unknown origin the first. attempt was in two thousand and fifteen the second was just last year. but you know this is nothing new frankly we have known for a very long time that it is a dangerous and risky vocation to be in opposition to mr putin's regime and so many

of our friends and colleagues have been forced to leave have been put into prison have been harassed and attacked and as you were just discussing a minute ago the most prominent leader in the russian opposition boris nemtsov has been assassinated two hundred yards from the kremlin wall in the middle of moscow three years ago and in terms of the level of political reform repression as much as i am sympathetic to what you say let's be fair. are a lot of us here in warsaw who. as watchers were recognize the dangers of you know their tax and your lives and of course you know what happened to bodies sauf are is a great thread here however don't please don't exaggerate each week on monday and on tuesday i go out and i must do with it or our audience all across russia and i say precisely what i consider right to say so i think it's also very

important not to mislead. the public outside their arsenal to do a lot of you misleading you exaggerating about the situation well now first of all i think there's no question that russia today is not the soviet union it is not a totalitarian state we do not have closed borders and i think it is also. absolutely true that the current regime is much more creative and much more intelligent about how it effects its political control but i think it's also absolutely fair and absolutely factual to say that the level of political repression is fast approaching the late soviet period ok russia has gone through revolutions collapse regime change wars in the past hundred years or more is there a fear of instability that is shared by a lot of russian people. and by many politicians and is that what allows a man like putin to stay in power for so long does it make someone as authoritarian as putin inevitable in a country like yours. i can't subscribe to that i don't believe in all the

cycles of that it are author of terrorism in russia what are some people you know are are crying war outside russia are if you know why only has managed to. ask people out on the streets and people went out on the streets in our hundred eighteen sitters of the russian federation of course you know this type of regime is no friend to democracy by any means it goes without saying there are pushing will patents crew was after. yet another integration in me two thousand and eighteen however r r r i think that part of the blame should be put on russian liberals and democrats who are complete . with. the with the regime for that.

in other ok let's one last question to you got to make kermit the speaker of parliament in russia said if there is putin there is russia if there is no tootin there is not russia there is this kind of personalisation around the leader what happens after putin's gone he wins the next election he serves another six years till twenty twenty four then he can't serve anymore under the current rules is he going to go is it going to be a post putin russia or is he going to stay on for life somehow so that statement you quoted from mr followed in that is one of the most insulting statements i have ever heard about russia or the russian people to even suggest that you know there wouldn't be a country with such a rich heritage such a great culture as russia without any one person let alone this one is absolutely insulting please don't confuse a country with an authoritarian regime that miss rules that those are not one of the same things in there as you know existed as long as all french it applies to a lot of time after him and will when you say after him when when will we see the back of him do. can you view one thing at my store and education one thing would

have been you know from the modern history of russia is that big political changes in one hundred in our country happen quickly and unexpectedly let me put that last word to you again you do agree with the there's no guarantee of putin's relate to that he lost the full terms twenty twenty or did he stays on for life he changes the rules again which in can't allow him to step down he will remain to be a front man for the corporation corporation will never allow him to go unless unless there will he will this corporation and pushing himself will be a challenge by people from outside and that's exactly right that the minute they realize that country is going down the heel it's according means is and pieces are the russian elite will stop looking for another leader and that that moment which in this bill will have to leave it there you have gania albertz vladimir carolers i thank you both for joining me on the show

a lot i'm opposed to decided to leave at the beginning political still had a very interesting discussion appreciate your insights that's our show up front will be back next week. the. march on al-jazeera. with all potential challengers out of the way egypt's president abdel fattah el-sisi is poised for a second time in power. a series of short personal stories that highlight the human triumph against the odds as president putin dominates the russian political scene and his reelection becomes more apparent we a sense what direction russia might take. with media trends constantly changing

listening post analyzes how the news is being covered. and as more people around the world struggle to find clean drinking water leaders and researchers gather in brazil to address a critical issue in march on al-jazeera. to . cut. them admission to the draft as hence adopted unanimously. the utility of the nation's security council approves a resolution that calls for a thirty day ceasefire across syria.