Russian journalist reveals new details about Putin's trip to Ukraine

And let's go now to Roman Badana, and he is a Russian journalist, the founder and editor-in-chief of the investigative journalism site Proyect, which has been targeted by the Russian government, and he left Russia facing the threat of a prison sentence. Roman, I'm glad to talk to you again. And a moment ago, I mentioned the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group in Russia, right? One of its leaders taken in for questioning today released on bail for allegedly discrediting the Russian armed forces. And we've heard about a number of similar arrests recently. Is Putin getting more aggressive at this time in cracking down? Yes, it's absolutely correct. In my view, the Kremlin has clearly launched a brutal, new brutal campaign against so-called internal enemies. And unfortunately, I'm afraid we will soon see very bad news of this kind from Russia.

More bad news on this. I mean, his stories are obviously horrible as they cross and the prison sentence is being handed out. I also know, Roman, you've been doing some new reporting on Putin's trip to the Russian-occupied city of Maripole over the weekend, right? Where he was, I mean, just looking at those buildings, that's not what Maripole looks like, right? They would have had to put some sort of facade on them. At one point, he was heckled by someone off camera. I want to play that moment. They yell, this is not true. It's all for show, seemingly surprising to Putin's security detail.

And of course, as you know, Roman, there's been some talk that Putin wasn't actually even there, that it was either somewhere else or it was a body double or something like that. This has been coming from, you know, official channels, right, even in Ukraine. And I know you did a lot of digging on it. What did you find? Yeah, we did some geolocation research and we have established that Putin was indeed driving through Maripole. And moreover, our colleagues from other Russian media, they also identified some of the people who got on the footage with Putin. And these people really live in Maripole. So all these in total suggest that the visit to Maripole, as well as the visit to Crimea and to the military base and rest of them, they really took place.

But the details matter. First, the visit was very secret. For example, not a single journalist in Moscow knew about the trip. Putin simply didn't take them with him. Second, there was a very limited list of officials traveling with Putin. This suggests that the trip was kept secret until the very last moment. And finally, it's important that the trip took place at night for the sake of greater safety.

And it shows us that the Kremlin was really afraid of information leaks. It turns out that the Kremlin do not trust even the officials surrounding Putin. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty incredible that they would think that that could be a threat to him and his safety says, says so much. Thank you so much, Roman. I'm glad to talk to you again. Thank you.