Cinema For Peace Chief Responds To Alexei Navalny’s Death; NGO Airlifted Activist From Russia in 2020: “I’ve Been Afraid For Months”
deadline.comJaka Bizilj, the founder of the Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation which organized the airlift from Russia of opposition activist Alexei Navalny after his poisoning in 2020, has responded to his sudden death in an Arctic Circle jail on Friday. “Seeing the kind of treatment that they were giving him, I’ve been afraid for months that they were going to kill him,” Bizilj told Deadline.
He suggested the writing had been on wall for Navalny ever since the death of Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash in August in the wake of his aborted coup over the summer. “The Prigozhin case, the uprising, showed that Russia is not as stable as we all believed.
After the killing of Prigozhin, Navalny was next on the list… I don’t think Putin saw him as an immediate threat but he was afraid of him in the long run,” said Bizilj. RELATED: Tucker Carlson Condemns Alexei Navalny’s Death As “Barbaric” Days After Trumpeting Vladimir Putin’s Russia Slovenian promoter and producer Bizilj created the Cinema for Peace Foundation in 2008 as an international non-profit organization with the goal to foster change through film.
Over the years it has worked with a host of stars including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney and Oliver Stone.
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