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The Arts Intel Report

The Man Putin Couldn't Kill

Alexei Navalny is very likely history’s only political target to have been poisoned by his underwear. The victim of a state-sponsored assassination attempt, the Russian dissident captured the world’s attention in August of last year when he fell violently ill on a flight back to Moscow. The Novichok nerve agent that was later revealed to have been planted in Navalny’s boxer shorts—which put him in a coma—marked his third poisoning. Jon Blair’s new Channel 4 documentary, The Man Putin Couldn’t Kill, not only chronicles the absurd story of the botched assassination, it also offers a captivating history of post-Soviet dissent. —Jacob Robbins

Photo courtesy of Channel 4.