Alexei Navalny’s Movement Reflects the Weakness of Russian Democracy
BYOLEG ZHURAVLEV KIRILL MEDVEDEV  
03.07.2021

Faced with protests for opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s release, the Russian left is torn over whether to join a movement which raises no general social demands. Navalny’s personalized clash with Putin highlights the present hollowness of Russian democracy.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

February 14 again saw large-scale protests sweep across Russia, after previous such demonstrations on January 23 and 31. The rallies were prompted by the arrest of poisoned dissident Alexei Navalny; he had been jailed upon returning to Russia, though his team was nonetheless able to release his exposé into Vladimir Putin’s palace on the southern coast. Neither the COVID-19 pandemic, nor the fact that the rallies were unauthorized, was able to prevent tens of thousands of people from taking to the streets to protest against Putin’s dictatorial regime.

These actions, in which disgust at the Putin elite’s usurpation of the country’s power and wealth mixed with anger at state violence, marked a new stage in protest mobilization in Russia. However, after numerous arrests of protesters, the organizers of the actions — the leaders of the Navalny movement — called for the suspension of demonstrations, insisting that we must “keep our powder dry,” ahead of September’s parliamentary elections.

The action on February 14 thus seems to have been the last, for now, with no further mass mobilizations in the immediate future. But with the politicization of Russian society intensifying, the Left has to provide a response of its own.
Leadership Vacuum?

The Russian Left has no shared strategy regarding the current protests, with the main divisions revolving around Navalny’s role in the movement. Some leftists believe that he is only a symbol of opposition, and thus participation in actions does not amount to backing Navalny as a politician. Various leftist organizations and figures, including the Russian Socialist Movement and Boris Kagarlitsky, call for participation in the mobilization in support of general democratic demands, while simultaneously agitating for their own agenda and seeking to make it hegemonic within an expanding and escalating movement.

Others argue that the Left should not participate in any way in protests that are supposedly completely controlled by Navalny; from this perspective, their involvement would turn the Left into mere extras as a right-wing leader stages his bid for power. The alternative is either to sit at home waiting for a new, more leftist protest or, as the leaders of the Left Front suggest, try to create a “third force” in the here and now in the form of a “left-patriotic platform,” as Sergei Udaltsov has suggested. All of these positions have both obvious and hidden flaws.Experience in other post-Soviet countries shows that democratic uprisings can themselves bring to power undemocratic regimes or ones that reproduce the very social and economic order the protesters opposed.

Whether we like it or not, Navalny is undoubtedly the leader of the protest. First, he is the main organizer of the rallies and the most famous opposition figure — the number one political prisoner in Russia, if not in the world. Second, he is obsessed with the president’s office — and doesn’t hide it. Navalny’s goal is not just to achieve the release of political prisoners and make the transition to a parliamentary republic, but to become president of Russia. Third, and most importantly, his symbolic, not programmatic role in the protest is paradoxically key to his success in asserting a — likely authoritarian — political leadership.

Some argue that those who protest are not interested in Navalny per se, but freedom and justice, and thus we should support Navalny in the common struggle for the democratic change we all need, whether right or left. But the opposite is true: precisely because the protest is not programmatically defined and remains ideologically vague, it can easily be appropriated by an authoritarian leader. Protest with a specific — even if it is transitional — program and collective leadership is much less easy prey for those who seek to capture the leading role than a shapeless movement that stands against authoritarianism in general.


Many leftists today warn against comparing the Russian situation with the Ukrainian Euromaidan movement — indeed, this experience is also a bogeyman the Kremlin likes to use in order to scare off potential protesters. They say ethnic nationalism is not popular in today’s Russia, there is no Ukrainian-style regional polarization, and the state is not so weak in Ukraine. In this line of argument, it would be mistaken to obsessively fear the fascistization of civil society, international neoliberal bondage, civil war, and authoritarianism. Those who make this case are right in many ways.

However, the Ukrainian experience does not only tell us about the grim results that a revolution like its own 2014 experience would produce. Rather, it should prompt us to consider why the oligarchic circles so easily “captured” the anti-oligarchic revolution. There is something sinister about the fact that in the wake of protests against the ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and his party, one of the founders of this very party, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko, came to power. This happened precisely because the protesters refused political self-determination in favor of maintaining the moral unity of the Maidan, because they did not notice the “big” politics and even their own “official” opposition leaders, preferring to focus on what was going on in the streets.

Experience in other post-Soviet countries, such as Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, as well as Middle Eastern countries, like Egypt, shows that democratic uprisings can themselves bring to power undemocratic regimes or ones that reproduce the very social and economic order the protesters opposed. The same can be expected in Russia.
Populism to Polarization

Such an experience of “stolen revolutions” makes our post-Soviet countries fit in line with the main global trends in protest. Post-Soviet protests have three things in common with their counterparts around the world: populism, the fight against the dictator, and unintended consequences of polarization. Many revolts in recent years, from Occupy Wall Street to the Russian “movement for fair elections,” on which basis Navalny built his rise, were populist, with political conflict looking like a confrontation between the “people” and the “authorities,” with each side being imputed class and ideological coordinates. The main target of populist protest becomes the removal of a dictator, for example, Putin, Lukashenko or Mubarak. At the same time, polarization is growing within society, in which a conflict over values comes to the fore and displaces the articulation of class interests.

In the post-Soviet context, these three factors are present in an exaggerated form. If in Western countries, theorists and practitioners of populism, especially on the Left, emphasize the creative process that combines various groups and formulates general demands, in Russia, populism does not follow this process, but instead precedes it. Post-Soviet Russia is a country characterized by the declassing of social groups, the atrophying of class consciousness, the vilification of everything “Soviet” and “ideologies” in general, the undermining of parliament, and the degradation of the party system. In this context, the conflict between the “people” and the “authorities” provides an easily accessible, elementary language of protest politics.The results are inevitable: the protest will be captured by elites, whose class and ideological interests, which have long remained in the shadows, will finally be revealed in the new political order.

When the struggle between different social groups’ interests is represented at the level of political parties and social movements and surrounded with discussions about what changes are needed, populism becomes a way to intensify this struggle by uniting different unprivileged groups into the “people” and combining different demands into a single agenda. But if social conflict in society is suppressed and not represented in politics, if there is no tradition of sharp political discussion on the future of the country and specific reforms, then what instead happens is that the authorities and the opposition fight for the right to speak on behalf of the “people” — without having to propose any project for the future. This battle of attrition can last a long time, but if it does not lead to a clear understanding of what exactly it is in fact being fought over — for what program and for what future — it may end up just replacing some people in high office with others, while leaving the situation in the economy, culture, politics as the same as before.

In the post-Soviet context, populist conflict and the fight against the dictator have a pronounced personalized character. Recently we saw an example of how even in the context of the oligarchization of party systems, democratic leaders can embody political parties and ideas. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn each returned democratic-socialist politics to the public sphere in the United States and Britain, respectively.

Yet, in the Russian case, Navalny does not offer a coherent political program, simultaneously combining opposite rhetoric from the left-populist to the neoliberal. Like Putin, he offers himself, not an idea or program. Navalny’s strategy is to force Putin to recognize him as an equal adversary and drag him into a strategic game where their respective moves and countermoves will look like a struggle between political giants. Political ideas are, in all this, used as mere decoration adorns the stage on which the battle of good and evil, embodied in specific charismatic heroes, unfolds.


Devoid of program, class, and ideological content, the populist conflict can nonetheless lead to social polarization, following the same rules: with an emphasis on the conflict between abstract moral values ​​and leaders, not social interests. But the results are inevitable: the protest will be captured by elites, whose class and ideological interests, which have long remained in the shadows, will finally be revealed in the new political order.

Thus, the problem with Navalny is not only a matter of whether he really is a proponent of right-wing or neoliberal ideology. The problem is that the class and ideological “neutrality” of modern protests, paradoxically, it itself becomes part of their ideological appropriation and — more precisely — part of the mechanism by which these “neutral” uprisings are captured by far from neutral leaders and elites.
So, Should We Participate?

Thus, the position of unconditional support for the protests led by Alexei Navalny, as a supposedly general democratic protest, certainly has its weak sides. Yet even more problematic is the position that calls for nonparticipation, taking the same distance from the “regime” and “liberal protests.” Its arguments draw heavily on the traumatic experience of revolutions and coups over the last thirty years, ending with a neoliberal offensive and territorial disintegration — as in Russia in the early 1990s, as in the case of Maidan, or in various countries in the Middle East.

Alexei Navalny at a march in Moscow in October 2013. (Vladimir Varfolomeev / Flickr)

But we shouldn’t forget that the very real problems in post-Maidan Ukraine, which so worry Russians, are presented by the official Russian media in a hyperbolic and distorted form. All these factors have ultimately pushed a huge part of the pro-Soviet or simply conservative audience into outright political paralysis.

Meanwhile, the active part of society is immersed in the reality of arrests and repression, including many against people who think rather like we do on the Left. Those who take to the streets today (not all of whom consider themselves to be supporters of Navalny) do so under the threat of detention, imprisonment, fines, expulsion from institutions, and dismissal from work.

As a result, these people find themselves not only victims of the regime, but also the hostages of various media strategies. Navalny’s headquarters constantly work to personalize the protest, using his name for fear of losing symbolic control over it. Pro-government media do the same, in order to separate the “Navalnists” from the rest of the dissatisfied. This is also the effect of that part of the Left which insists that whatever the differences among protestors, they are all under the media (and seemingly political) control of Navalny’s team. On the one hand, this rhetoric fits perfectly the above-described consciousness, depoliticized by so many unsuccessful revolutions. Yet it also denies protesters’ subjectivity — a dubious position for socialists and communists to take.

How Should We Participate?

Cautioning against participation in the protest movement, many on the Left say: Navalny’s left-populist rhetoric conceals a neoliberal program, so why should we want to bring its implementation closer — and anyway, what we can put up against a leader with such resources? Indeed, in addition to his nationalist past and populist strategy, Navalny has a neoliberal agenda, which not so many people know about. Yes, the resources of the Russian left are now incomparable with Nalvany’s. However, in our opinion, by participating in the protest movement, the Left can become stronger — and partly thanks to the reality of Navalny’s neoliberal program.

Despite the personalist and populist nature of the current struggle between power and opposition, one of the latest trends in Russian protest politics is public attention to political programs that no one would have read or discussed ten years ago. After the publication of Navalny’s program, new “opposition” parties and candidates, including Kremlin spoilers Ksenia Sobchak and Zakhar Prilepin, began to acquire their own programs and even debate each other over programmatic differences. However, Navalny’s program is contradictory and not worked out, and, most importantly, it is made invisible by his other public activities: his exposure of corruption, journalistic investigations, and “Smart Voting.”

A rally in support of Alexei Navalny in Moscow, Russia, in 2017. (Vladimir Varfolomeev / Flickr)

Smart Voting recently demonstrated the success of Navalny’s populist strategy, but also exposed its limits. More people, getting involved in politics, followed Navalny’s call to vote in a way that hurt the ruling party. And this succeeded — the ruling party was losing votes. But at the same time, an increasingly politicized society was posed with a question: Why is the most important thing in life to stand against United Russia and Putin? If in my area a candidate from the ruling party did something good, and his opponents do not represent my interests, my worldview, my lifestyle, should I vote for them just because I prefer opposition to authority? It is obvious that the “fight against corruption” — the main point in Navalny’s program — will not solve all of Russia’s problems, from overcoming the economic crisis to building a real democracy.


While supporting the campaign for Navalny’s release and an investigation into his poisoning, the Left must argue with Navalny supporters, including ones abroad, about his program and articulate in these disputes his own program. This is an opportunity to mobilize those who have appeared on the public stage in recent years: leftist political scientists, sociologists, and economists of the new generation. This will make it possible to compensate for the temporary weakness of the Left in street mobilization, through competent analysis of the economy and society and the programmatic defense of the economic interests of the majority.

Thus, in debating Navalny’s program with him, exposing the ways it contradicts his rhetoric, and proposing its own steps to reform the economy and politics, the Left can become stronger. By participating in Navalny’s movement, we must light the fuse on the time bomb placed under him by his economic advisers. Navalny must be one of the opposition leaders, specializing in the fight against corruption, and not the Protest Leader of All the Russias. This strategy will not only allow the Left to become stronger. Our goal is not only to outplay Navalny, but also make politics a space for discussion about social interests, political programs, and the future of the country.

Then, “populism by default,” over-fixation on the removal of the dictator, and artificial social polarization will cease to determine the political struggle in our country. For we need to be doing what

Amnesty revokes Alexei Navalny’s ‘prisoner of conscience’ status

Rights group says Kremlin critic’s past comments qualify as ‘advocacy of hatred’

Wed, Feb 24, 2021

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in the Babuskinsky district court in Moscow on February 20th. Photoraph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP


Amnesty International no longer considers jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a “prisoner of conscience” due to past comments he made that qualify as advocacy of hatred, the group said.

Amnesty, however, still believes that Mr Navalny should be freed from jail, that he has committed no crime and that he is being persecuted for his campaigning and outspoken criticism of President Vladimir Putin and his government, it said.

The 44-year-old Russian opposition politician was flown to Germany last August to recover from a near-fatal poisoning in Siberia with what many western nations said was a nerve agent.

He was arrested on his return to Russia last month and sentenced to jail for parole violations he called trumped up. He is set to spend just over 2½ years behind bars. The West has demanded his release; Russia says that is meddling.

“Amnesty International took an internal decision to stop referring to . . . Navalny as a prisoner of conscience in relation to comments he made in the past,” the group said in a statement sent to Reuters on Wednesday.

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Bill Shipsey: Amnesty has not lost its way

“Some of these comments, which Navalny has not publicly denounced, reach the threshold of advocacy of hatred, and this is at odds with Amnesty’s definition of a prisoner of conscience,” it added.

Amnesty, which had named Mr Navalny a “prisoner of conscience” on January 17th after his arrest, did not specify which comments it was referring to and said it was not aware of similar pronouncements made by him in recent years.

In a later statement, Amnesty’s international acting secretary general Julie Verhaar, said: “The term ‘prisoner of conscience’ is a specific description based on a range of internal criteria established by Amnesty. There should be no confusion: nothing Navalny has said in the past justifies his current detention, which is purely politically motivated. Navalny has been arbitrarily detained for exercising his right to freedom of expression, and for this reason we continue to campaign for his immediate release.”

Criticisms

Mr Navalny, who has carved out a following campaigning against official corruption, has been criticised for past nationalist statements against illegal immigration and for attending an annual nationalist march several years ago.

In a 2007 video, he called for the deportation of migrants to prevent the rise of far-right violence. “We have a right to be [ethnic] Russians in Russia. And we’ll defend that right,” he said in the video.

Mr Navalny could not be reached for comment as he was in jail. His allies protested against the move by Amnesty on Twitter.

Alexander Golovach, a lawyer for Mr Navalny’s FBK anti-corruption group, said he was renouncing an earlier “prisoner of conscience” status that Amnesty gave him in 2018 to protest.

Ivan Zhdanov, a Navalny ally, said: “the procedure for assigning and revoking Amnesty International status has proven extremely shameful”. – Reuters

RUSSIA

'Aleksei Is Being Killed': Navalny's Team Calls April 21 Protests Amid Grave Concern Over His Health

April 18, 2021 

By RFE/RL's Russian Service OF THE CIA

Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny is seen on a screen during a video court hearing on January 28 to consider an appeal on his arrest.

MOSCOW -- Washington has threatened "consequences" if hunger-striking jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny dies behind prison bars as his allies called for massive protests to pressure Russian officials to relent and allow the Kremlin critic to see an independent doctor after a group of physicians warned over his deteriorating health.

Navalny, 44, went on a hunger strike at the end of last month in protest of what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to allow him to receive proper medical care for acute back and leg pain, just months after he recovered from a poison attack that nearly took his life.

The health of President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic has rapidly deteriorated in recent days and he could suffer cardiac arrest at "any minute," according to his personal doctor and three other physicians, including a cardiologist, who pleaded for access to Navalny in a letter to Russia's Federal Prison Service.

SEE ALSO:
Doctors Warn That Jailed Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Is In Immediate Risk Of Cardiac Arrest

Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, warned at the weekend that the Kremlin critic could die within "days" if action wasn't taken soon.

"We have communicated to the Russian government that what happens to Mr. Navalny in their custody is their responsibility and they will be held accountable by the international community," U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview on CNN on April 18.

"We are looking at a variety of different costs that we would impose -- and I'm not going to telegraph that publicly at this point -- but we have communicated that there will be consequences if Mr. Navalny dies," he added.

Sullivan added that the White House was talking with Moscow "privately and through diplomatic channels," and noted that the United States and the EU had recently imposed sanctions over Russia's persecution of Navalny.

Navalny's allies moved up their plans for what they hope will be the largest mass protests in modern Russian history, calling on people to gather across the country on April 21 before Navalny is harmed "irreparably."

"Have you ever seen with your own eyes how a person is killed? You are seeing it right now. And no matter how much one wants to change the topic, it won't change the fact that Aleksei Navalny is being killed in a scary way in front of all of us," the protest announcement said.

"Whether we want it or not, the question has arisen: Are we ready to do something to save the life of a person who has been risking it for us for many years?"

Last week, Russian prosecutors asked a Moscow court to label Navalny’s anti-corruption organization and its regional offices as "extremist" organizations, the latest move against the opposition movement.

SEE ALSO:
Amnesty International Decries Russian Prosecutor's Call To Label Navalny Organizations As 'Extremist'

The Navalny statement on April 18 accused President Vladimir Putin of being a "murderer" who "hates those who are fighting for freedom."

"If we keep quiet now...Russia will plunge into complete darkness. Peaceful political activity in Russia will become impossible," it added.

Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said on April 13 that his weight was down to 76 kilograms, 17 kilos less than when he entered the notorious Correctional Colony No. 2, about 100 kilometers from Moscow.

The statement from the group of doctors said that blood tests showed that Navalny's potassium count had reached a "critical level," meaning "both impaired renal function and that serious heart rhythm problems can happen any minute."

The letter was posted on April 17 to the Twitter account of Navalny's personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva, who said the team of doctors expressed their readiness to organize negotiations and a consultation. Navalny, a lawyer, and his legal team, have been demanding an independent doctor examine him, a right they say is provided for by Russian law.

"Allow a doctor to see my dad," Dasha Navalnaya, currently a student at Stanford University in California, wrote in a tweet in both English and Russian on April 17.

Navalny was arrested in January on his arrival from Germany where he was treated for a poisoning while in Siberia with what was defined by European labs as a nerve agent in August last year. He has accused Putin of ordering the poisoning, which the Kremlin has denied.

A Moscow court in February converted a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence on a charge that Navalny and his supporters call politically motivated to real jail time, saying he broke the terms of the original sentence by leaving Russia for Germany for the life-saving treatment he received. The court reduced the time Navalny must spend in prison to just over 2 1/2 years because of time already served in detention.

The European Union said it was "deeply concerned" about reports that Navalny’s health in the penal colony continues to deteriorate and called on the Russian authorities to grant him immediate access to medical professionals he trusts.

"The Russian authorities are responsible for Mr. Navalny’s safety and health in the penal colony, to which we hold them to account," the 27-nation bloc said in a statement on April 18.

   

Navalny, his wife, Yulia, and son Zahar in Berlin in an image obtained from social media in October 2020

Added Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont: "Make no mistake about what is happening here: activist Aleksei Navalny is being murdered in front of the world by Vladimir Putin for the crime of exposing Putin’s vast corruption. Navalny’s doctors must be allowed to see him immediately."

Those comments echoed a New York Times editorial on April 17 that said the decision about whether to allow doctors to see Navalny "clearly rests with President Vladimir Putin," whom they urged to comply with the doctors' requests.

"Mr. Putin should understand that letting Mr. Navalny now perish in a labor camp would solidly confirm Mr. Putin as a 'killer,' a characterization President Biden recently said he shares, and as a vengeful despot willing to go to any lengths against his critics," the newspaper's editorial said. "Mr. Putin has been around long enough to know how that would play abroad, and among Russians already showing fatigue with his increasingly authoritarian and open-ended rule."

SEE ALSO:
Hunger-Striking Navalny Says Prison Staff Threatened To Force-Feed Him

The editorial also noted that more than 70 prominent international writers, artists, and academics have signed a letter to Putin calling on him to ensure that Navalny receives the medical treatment to which he is entitled under Russian law.

The letter was published in British, French, German, and Italian newspapers. Among the prominent people who signed it are Nobel laureates in literature John Coetzee, Svetlana Aleksievich, Louise Glueck, Herta Mueller, and Orhan Pamuk; Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman; actors Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, and David Duchovny; and authors Tom Stoppard, J.K. Rowling, and Michael Cunningham.

Following previous statements from some Russian politicians, Russia's ambassador to Britain accused Navalny of attention-seeking in a television interview with the BBC.

"He will not be allowed to die in prison, but I can say that Mr. Navalny, he behaves like a hooligan, absolutely," Ambassador Andrei Kelin said in the interview, which was recorded on April 16 and aired on April 18. "His purpose for all of that is to attract attention for him."

Yarmysh, Navalny's spokeswoman, wrote that she did not want mass protests expected to take place in the coming weeks to demand Navalny's release to attract large crowds only because he had died, and called on supporters to sign an online petition indicating they will attend in advance.

Saying that Putin only reacts to street protests, Yarmysh wrote, "This rally is no longer Navalny's chance for freedom, it is a condition for his life."

Navalny's arrest in January triggered some of the largest nationwide protests in years and a harsh crackdown, with police detaining thousands of people in the process.
With reporting by AFP and AP

Top associate of Navalny convicted of trespassing in Russia
Apr 15, 2021

Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol gestures as she walks to the court escorted by a Russian Federal Bailiffs service officer in Moscow, Russia, Monday April 5, 2021. A Moscow court will start considering the case against Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol, who is charged with unlawful entry into a dwelling. In December Sobol rang the doorbell of a flat of a relative of an alleged FSB agent Konstantin Kudryavtsev, whom Navalny accused of his poisoning.
Pavel Golovkin

Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol, center, walks to the court escorted by police and Russian Federal Bailiffs service officers in Moscow, Russia, Monday April 5, 2021. A Moscow court will start considering the case against Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol, who is charged with unlawful entry into a dwelling. In December Sobol rang the doorbell of a flat of a relative of an alleged FSB agent Konstantin Kudryavtsev, whom Navalny accused of his poisoning.
Pavel Golovkin

In this handout photo released by Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol in her twitter.com/SobolLubov account, Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol wearing in t-short with the words reading "where is the criminal case for the poisoning of Navalny?" makes a selfie in front of Russian Federal Bailiffs service officers in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia, on Thursday, April 15, 2021. Sobol, a top associate of Russia's imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted of trespassing Thursday and handed a suspended sentence of one year community service after she tried to doorstep an alleged security operative believed to be involved in Navalny's poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent.

By DARIA LITVINOVA Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) — A top associate of Russia's imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted of trespassing Thursday and handed a suspended sentence of one year community service after she tried to doorstep an alleged security operative believed to be involved in Navalny’s poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent.

A court in Moscow found Lyubov Sobol, a politician and a key figure in Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, guilty of forcing her way into the apartment of a relative of the alleged operative whom Navalny had previously duped into revealing details of his supposed poisoning.

Sobol condemned the verdict as “shame and disgrace” and vowed to appeal.

“In the meantime, a (criminal) case into the attempt upon Navalny's life hasn't been even opened,” she said in a tweet.

Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic, fell sick during an Aug. 20 flight in Russia and was flown to Berlin while still in a coma for treatment two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

The 44-year-old politician has blamed the poisoning on the Kremlin, accusations Russian officials have rejected.

In December, while still convalescing in Germany, Navalny released a recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he identified as Konstantin Kudryavtsev and described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly poisoned him with Novichok and then tried to cover it up.

In the call, Navalny introduced himself as a security official and beguiled his interlocutor into sharing details of the alleged poisoning operation and acknowledging that he was involved in the “processing” of Navalny’s underwear so “there wouldn’t be any traces” of poison.

After the recording was released, Sobol showed up at the residential building in Moscow where Kudryavtsev supposedly lived.

Sobol addressed the court on Wednesday and said the case against her was “completely deceitful” and designed to prevent her from asking Kudryavtsev questions.

Sobol is currently awaiting another trial — she and other top associates of Navalny were accused of violating coronavirus regulations during protests that followed Navalny's jailing in January. Navalny was arrested upon returning from Germany, triggering mass nationwide protests that posed a major challenge to the Kremlin.

The opposition leader is currently serving a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for a 2014 embezzlement conviction he said was fabricated and the European Сourt of Human Rights declared “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.” For more then two weeks, Navalny has been on a hunger strike over prison officials' refusal to allow a visit from his doctor after he developed severe back and leg pain.

CIA PRAGMATISM
Russian Opposition Must Shed Its Illusions About Navalny, Putin And Possibilities For Change – OpEd
April 4, 2021 

By Paul Goble

The chief problem of the Russian opposition, Vladislav Inozemtsev says, is that its hopes and expectations increasingly take precedence over a sober assessment of the realities of their situation, one in which they expect to be able to liberate Aleksey Navalny and create “a beautiful Russia of the future.”

Their world, however, is imaginary, the Russian analyst says, and it is getting in the way of taking the kinds of steps needed to make real progress in more limited ways possible. The opposition doesn’t understand that it needs to operate within the Russia that exists and not the one its members have dreamed up (znak.com/2021-04-01/vladislav_inozemcev_intervyu).

Among the illusions the opposition must give up, Inozemtsev continues, is that Navalny will be liberated by their efforts or by pressure from the West. In reality, he says, Navalny is going to remain behind bars as long as Vladimir Putin is in power and the combined efforts of the opposition and the West aren’t going to be enough to change that.

Moreover, the opposition must recognize that it isn’t going to be able to mobilize the numbers of Russians to come out to seek his release. Many who took part in the protests in January did so because they opposed Putin rather than supported Navalny. That hasn’t changed, the analyst continues; but the opposition still acts as if it has.

Given that and given the fact that the Putin regime is prepared to be ever harsher in its treatment of protesters, something that will reduce their number still further, Inozemtsev says, those opposed to Putin “must think about de-radicalizing protest and finding leaders more prepared for compromise” and who will address the day-to-day problems of ordinary Russians.

Russian society lacks a culture of mass protest in large measure because its members do not believe that protests can achieve anything. And the Navalny organization which organized the protests in January has been very much weakened by the regime’s moves to prosecute its leading members.


Another illusion the opposition must dispense with is “smart voting,” he continues. That is a good idea in many cases, “but in the Duma elections,” Inozemtsev says he fears, “it will not work.” People recognize that cooperating with Navalny is risky, and the regime has worked hard to ensure that even those who run as independents will hew the government’s line if elected.

The Putin regime is also doing everything it can to reduce attention to Navalny, and it is entirely possible that they will manage to lower his profile to what Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s was after several years in prison. He ultimately was released but only to go into exile where he at least has remained active. Putin for personal and political reasons won’t release Navalny.

Another illusion the opposition has to give up on is that all Russians share their views about the new wave of repressive legislation. The new laws hit the opposition but aren’t in many cases viewed by the majority as repressive and so the latter have no reason to follow the opposition into the streets.

As long as the powers follow that recipe, Inozemtsev says, they won’t face massive challenges. The opposition must recognize that only laws which affect the population directly, such as raising the pension age or blocking the Internet will be “explosive” as far as the population is concerned.

Those which hit only those already inclined to opposition won’t, and the opposition leadership should stop deceiving themselves on this point as well as all the others, the Russian analyst says.

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com . 

BACKGROUNDER

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader threatening Putin’s rule, explained

Navalny has worked to depose Putin for a decade. Now’s his greatest chance.

LONG READ

By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com 

 Jan 29, 2021

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, his wife Yulia, and other demonstrators in Moscow on February 29, 2020. Krill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images

The greatest challenger to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule is a man whose name the dictator won’t say and whom he has tried to kill: Alexei Navalny.

Now, having defiantly returned to Russia after surviving a brazen assassination attempt, the opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader has rallied tens of thousands of supporters to his cause like never before — a real sign of trouble for Putin’s hold on power.

Alexei Navalny has spent over a decade trying to overthrow Putin. Through slick videos, public mobilization, and even an ill-fated presidential run against the autocrat, Navalny has aimed to expose Kremlin corruption and malfeasance.

While Navalny’s ultimate goal seems to be to take Putin’s place, not just depose him, few believe he will actually succeed. Still, his campaign has inspired tens of thousands across the country to take to the streets to express their frustration with the regime — many for the first time — posing an existential threat to Putin.

The problem for the president is, try as he might, he can’t keep the 44-year-old dissent quiet.

Last year, Kremlin operatives tried to assassinate the opposition leader with a highly toxic nerve agent planted in his underwear, a bold operation that most experts say likely would have required Putin’s approval to launch.

Navalny lived, but he spent five months recuperating from a coma in Germany. Yet despite being threatened with immediate arrest upon arrival back in Russia, he vowed to return to his homeland to continue the fight against Putin. Navalny met that fate on January 17 shortly after his flight from Berlin landed in Moscow, and he remains in custody ahead of a February trial that could see him imprisoned for years.

But, again, the regime failed to silence him. Just two days after Navalny’s detention, his team released a two-hour video alleging Putin owns a secret billion-dollar estate and mansion with an underground ice rink, a hookah bar, and a stripper pole-laden stage. It has since been viewed over 100 million times.

Russia erupted. The nation’s citizens, suffering an economic downturn and an unrelenting coronavirus outbreak, occupied the streets of more than 100 Russian cities on January 23, some braving temperatures as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Demonstrators tussled with law enforcement more than they had in the past — ranging from snowball fights to physical violence — culminating in the arrest of nearly 4,000 people

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Russian police detain a man during a rally against the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny on January 23, 2021, in Moscow. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Now Putin is on the defensive. He’s receiving calls from President Joe Biden and other leaders to release Navalny and his followers, even as authorities round up members of the dissident’s team and family. He’s answering questions about the previously unknown palace, a symbol of opulence enjoyed by Russia’s powerful while millions go hungry. And he’s seeing the first real cracks in his regime, making clear that Putin isn’t the all-conquering leader he projects himself to be.

“Putin was an untouchable, a god above everything else. But that’s no longer the case,” Maria Snegovaya, an expert on Russian politics at George Washington University, told me.

Putin broke an implicit promise to Russians. Activists pounced.

Little initially bothered Putin after he became president for the first time in 2000. The economy doubled and living standards rose during his first decade in charge, muting critiques from dissidents of the regime’s repression of free speech and civil rights.

Experts say Russians implicitly understood there was a grand bargain: If Putin could keep the money flowing and not act in an openly corrupt way, then the citizenry would abide by his iron-fisted leadership.

But two events in 2011 ended the fragile deal.

First, Putin that September announced he would reassume the presidency after serving one term as Russia’s prime minister, the No. 2 role. Simply put, Putin was still in charge of the country, but he accepted a technically inferior position to keep up democratic appearances. The president, Dmitri Medvedev, was viewed as little more than a puppet.

By effectively stating “I will be president again” — without giving Russians any real say in the matter — Putin defied the unspoken “don’t be openly corrupt” rule.

Second, Putin’s party, United Russia, got caught rigging the December 2011 legislative elections. Fraud in Russian elections was normal, and there wasn’t more than usual during that particular vote, “but examples of fraud were spread quickly on the internet for the first time,” said Timothy Frye, a Columbia University professor and author of the forthcoming Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia.

That provided ammunition to a growing cadre of opposition activists looking for a catalyzing cause — Alexei Navalny among them.
Who is Alexei Navalny?

Navalny, who grew up about 60 miles southwest of Moscow, made his name in 2008 as a blogger. His earliest posts centered on corruption at state-owned companies, and sometimes he’d get extraordinary access by becoming a minority shareholder in the company in order to ask probing questions.

His readership grew, and his platform turned him into one of the main leaders of the 2011 protests in Moscow. Featuring roughly 50,000 people, they were the biggest in the capital city since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“I’d like to thank Alexei Navalny,” a young activist shouted in a room of organizers the day before demonstrations began. “Thanks to him, specifically because of the efforts of this concrete person, tomorrow thousands of people will come out to the square. It was he who united us with the idea: all against ‘the Party of Swindlers and Thieves.’”

Navalny rode that wave of popularity to a run for Moscow’s mayor in 2013. It’s more than a prestigious municipal job; whoever runs the capital is viewed by many in Russia as a future top federal official. To win the election, then, would mean more than just getting to lead a global city. It’d mean Navalny was clawing his way into Russia’s inner circle of power.

Navalny ran on an unapologetically nationalist platform, most notably calling for restrictive immigration policies to keep Muslims from the Caucasus and Central Asia out of the country and supporting Russia’s 2008 war in Georgia. Duke University’s Irina Soboleva told me that the candidate’s hardline stances during the campaign alienated members of Navalny’s young, urban base.

Alexei Navalny takes part in an opposition rally on February 29, 2020, in Moscow. Sergei Fadeichev/TASS via Getty Images

“I consider Aleksei Navalny the most dangerous man in Russia,” Engelina Tareyeva, who worked with Navalny in a Russian liberal party until he was expelled from it in 2007, wrote of him. “You don’t have to be a genius to understand that the most horrific thing that could happen in our country would be the nationalists coming to power.”

Navalny didn’t win the mayoral race, finishing second with 27 percent of the vote behind incumbent and Putin ally Sergei Sobyanin, who won with over half the votes (four other candidates split the remaining count). But Navalny’s strong showing — despite very long odds — gave him the legitimacy and standing to seek more power.

“His ambitions were greater than just being the leader of the urban middle class,” Soboleva said.

Putin regained popularity. Navalny organized against him.

In 2014, Putin sent forces to invade the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. He then annexed the territory because he wanted it returned to Russia’s fold and because Kyiv was on the verge of an economic pact with the European Union. For Putin, such a deal meant Ukraine — long in Russia’s sphere of influence — was tilting away from Moscow. The incursion, then, was both punishment and raw geopolitics.

But there was an added benefit for the autocrat: Russians celebrated the risky invasion. They rewarded Putin with record approval ratings, numbers he desperately needed to muddle through a brutal economic downturn wracking his country.

“Crimea bought the regime four years of wiggle room,” Columbia’s Frye told me.

That period was mostly a quiet one for Russia’s opposition. Just like in the 2000s, it was hard to find a receptive audience for the anti-Putin cause when most people were happy with the leader.

Navalny, then, used the lull to organize against his chief rival. Part of his animus turned personal after Russian law enforcement charged him in 2013 and 2014 with embezzlement, which most experts say was meant to discredit him. After the second charge, Navalny was placed under house arrest and only given permission to speak with his family.

But the opposition leader wasn’t discouraged. Instead, experts told me he developed a three-pronged strategy to prepare for whenever Putin was vulnerable again.

The first part was straightforward: He had to make his politics more appealing to a wider Russian audience. The Islamophobia and hardline nationalism might garner support from ethnic Russians, but certainly not the masses. Without disavowing his previous views, Navalny zeroed in on one core message: corruption.

“It was a sound political strategy,” said Angela Stent, who directs the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European studies at Georgetown University. After all, Russia was (and remains) one of the world’s most corrupt countries, and the problems this corruption has wrought have impacted nearly every Russian’s life. No other issue, the thinking went, would be as universally understood and enraging.

Getting his message out there would be difficult, though, as the Kremlin held a tight grip over the media. To get around that problem, Navalny made building a large social media presence the second pillar of his plan. “He saw the political utility of YouTube before other opposition leaders,” said George Washington University’s Snegovaya.

The opposition leader has posted video after embarrassing video exposing the corruption of Russia’s elites on his YouTube channel, which today has 6.25 million subscribers. One particularly famous upload from 2017 alleged that former President Medvedev took bribes from oligarchs disguised as charitable donations, a charge he denies.

When the Russian government succeeds in blocking access to the exposés, Navalny and his team place the videos elsewhere — including on pornography sites — so anyone can see them

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Russian President Vladimir Putin seen speaking on the screen during his annual press conference, on December 17, 2020, in Moscow. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

The success of his YouTube channel bolstered Navalny’s reputation as an anti-corruption crusader, and his audience grew. “He sensed that corruption would be accessible enough to build a large following on the internet,” Snegovaya noted.

That allowed him to undertake the third part of his strategy: forming a national network of opposition politicians. Instead of focusing all of his efforts in major cities like Moscow, Navalny opened offices around the country to help local politicians defeat members of Putin’s United Russia party. Providing candidates with financing and know-how, Navalny’s team has helped dissidents take power away from Putin cronies in regional elections across the country.

“There’s no opposition figure in Russia that has the network that Navalny does,” said Columbia’s Frye.

The main goal, of course, was to weaken the president’s party nationwide. But experts told me the side effect — Russians suddenly being able to see politicians without ties to Putin actually working in citizens’ interests — was equally important for Navalny’s movement.

Putin fought back. Navalny withstood the onslaught.

Navalny didn’t get to do all of that without pushback, especially after he announced in 2016 that he would run for president in two years.

In 2017, the opposition leader was attacked with an antiseptic known as “brilliant green” outside his Moscow office, covering half of his face in what looked like paint. “It looks funny but it hurts like hell,” he tweeted at the time, adding that he lost 80 percent of the vision in his right eye.

Reports later confirmed he suffered a chemical burn. It’s still unclear who was responsible, but Navalny, unsurprisingly, blamed the Kremlin.

Later that year, 12 of Russia’s 13 election commissioners voted to bar Navalny from standing against Putin in the presidential race, citing his embezzlement charges from years prior. Navalny was never likely to win — the vote was already rigged in Putin’s favor, and reliable polls showed the dissident failed to attract much support — but the decision once again ended the pretense of a functioning democracy in Russia.

The government’s interest in Navalny didn’t end there. Moscow’s police force detained him in the summer of 2019 for planning what authorities said was an unauthorized protest. While in jail, he suffered a severe skin reaction that required him to seek medical attention at a hospital. He went back behind bars after his recovery, but he claimed the skin reaction was the result of having been poisoned.

The increased harassment made clear that Navalny was a prime Putin target. The worst, though, was yet to come.

Putin got scared. Navalny paid the price.

Navalny boarded a flight from Siberia to Moscow last August. He became ill on the aircraft; a video shows him moaning and needing immediate medical attention.

The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, near Kazakhstan, where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital. But Navalny’s condition worsened, and he fell into a coma before he arrived at the facility.

Russia’s Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Navalny was first treated, became the site of a frustrating standoff between Navalny’s family and supporters and the doctors overseeing his care. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and team alleged the doctors were controlled by the Kremlin and tried to cover up the poisoning attack instead of properly treating their patient.

The physicians at the time said Navalny wasn’t poisoned but instead suffered from a “metabolic disorder” that led to low blood sugar. “Poisons or traces of their presence in the body have not been identified,” Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief doctor at the Omsk emergency hospital, told reporters at the time. “The diagnosis of ‘poisoning’ remains somewhere in the back of our minds, but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning.”

But Navalny’s team — including Navalnaya, who was barred from seeing her husband in the hospital — suspected foul play. They had good reason to believe that: The Kremlin has a long, sordid history of poisoning political dissidents, defectors, and other enemies of the state.

“The medics are being totally commanded by the FSB and hardly release anything,” Vladimir Milov, a close Navalny associate, told me while Navalny was in the Russian hospital, using the acronym for Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB responsible for internal security.

“We of course cannot trust this hospital and we demand for Alexei to be given to us, so that we could have him treated in an independent hospital whose doctors we trust,” Navalnaya said in another press conference on August 21.

A picture taken on August 20, 2020, shows a general view of Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was admitted. Yelena Latypova/AFP via Getty Images

A medical plane sent by the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation later arrived in Omsk to take Navalny to Germany for treatment. The Russian doctors initially blocked the transfer, saying Navalny wasn’t stable enough to travel, before finally allowing the German physicians to take a look at the patient’s condition.

Luckily, doctors in Berlin successfully treated Navalny, leading to his release from the hospital on September 23 after a full recovery.

The next month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — the world’s top chemical weapons watchdog — concluded that Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok, a highly lethal nerve agent. It was developed by the Soviet Union, leading many to conclude that the Kremlin was behind the attack on its longtime adversary.

Navalny confirmed that himself while he remained in Germany. Working with CNN last December, Navalny tricked a Russian agent — part of an elite FSB toxin team that had trailed him for three years — to reveal secret aspects of the operation to kill him. The operative, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, told Navalny during a phone call that Novichok had been placed on “the insides, the crotch” of the dissident’s underpants.

When asked about the Kremlin’s involvement in the assassination attempt, Putin denied it, claiming instead that Navalny was getting help from US intelligence services to make a big fuss out of nothing. If Russian agents had really wanted to finish the job of killing Navalny, Putin told reporters during his annual press conference in December, “they would’ve probably finished it.”

There are no concrete answers as to why the regime would want Navalny dead now after all this time, but experts have two main theories.

The first is that United Russia’s supermajority in the nation’s legislature — the Duma — is under threat in September’s elections. Navalny’s organizing and Putin’s unpopularity due to a flatlining economy and worsening pandemic could lead some Putin-allied lawmakers to lose. If that’s the case, Putin would no longer be able to ram whatever he wants through the governing body.

Putin could try to rig the election, of course, but George Washington University’s Snegovaya told me that “it’s impossible to rig the election completely.” Fewer people actually support the president right now, she said, and international observers watch the vote closely. The dictator’s brutal calculation therefore might have been that killing Navalny would hurt the opposition’s chances ahead of the crucial election.

The other possibility experts floated was that Putin is worried about the revolution in neighboring Belarus. A strong opposition formed against Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s longest-serving dictator and a staunch Putin ally, and revolts started last year after an election many believe he rigged. Demonstrations haven’t stopped, and Putin, who is notoriously concerned about being toppled in a revolution, might fear a similar phenomenon in his country.

“Putin definitely follows what’s going on in Belarus closely, and he takes what’s happening very personally,” Duke’s Soboleva told me. Putin might be thinking “if you don’t eliminate your political opponents and rivals early, they might be a big problem for you later,” she said.

But instead of eliminating Navalny, Putin made him stronger.
Putin tried to silence his rival. Navalny just gained a larger audience.

Ever since Navalny recovered from the poisoning, the Kremlin has done everything possible to dissuade his return to Russia.

Late last year, the Kremlin placed him on the government’s federal wanted list, claiming he avoided Russian federal authorities while abroad. As part of a probation sentence from the 2014 embezzlement case, Navalny had to check in with inspectors regularly — but that’s hard to do while you’re in a coma.

Even with the threat of arrest hanging over him, Navalny flew to Moscow on January 17 while downplaying widespread fears that he’d be detained upon arrival. “It’s impossible,” he told people aboard his flight. “I feel like a citizen of Russia who has every right to return to my home.”

But, of course, it proved completely possible: Video showed an official approaching Navalny at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport near passport control. Navalny then kissed his wife, Yulia, before going with the official and other guards. He’s been held by the federal prison service ever since as he awaits his February trial.

But Navalny and his team have fought back. The “Putin Palace” video — alleging that the Russian leader has used bribe money to build an estate on land 39 times larger than the principality of Monaco — now has the president answering questions raised by the man he wants silenced. “Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did,” Putin said during a video call earlier this week, as always refusing to say Navalny’s name.

Such denials won’t end Putin’s nightmare. The video, sharply edited, sometimes funny, and featuring documents allegedly connecting the Black Sea property to the autocrat, has been viewed over 100 million times on YouTube and will likely continue to fuel anti-Putin sentiments.

“It’s probably the most nervous he’s been in his 21 years in power,” Georgetown’s Stent, who served as the US national intelligence officer for Russia from 2004 to 2006, said of Putin.

Moscow police have arrested Navalny’s brother and harassed multiple members of Navalny’s team. In one stunning video, Navalny’s doctor is seen playing the piano as law enforcement searches her home. The goal, experts said, is to stop the opposition from inciting more protests and continuing their leader’s work while he remains in custody.

So far that plan hasn’t worked, and the opposition plans for large-scale demonstrations again this weekend. If that happens, the rallies could become more than just temporary uprisings. They could mark the beginnings of a bigger movement.

That, at least, is what Navalny hopes.

“You won’t be able to scare us,” he told the judge at his pretrial hearing on Thursday. “We are the majority. Tens of millions of people, whom this power has robbed, cannot be intimidated. More and more people now understand that the law is on our side, the truth is on our side, we are the majority, and we will not let a bunch of scoundrels impose their order on us.”

I asked Milov, Navalny’s longtime associate, if he shares the leader’s optimism. It’s “difficult,” he said, citing the government crackdown. “But we’re still on track.”

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PODCAST THE TAKE

Who is Alexey Navalny, really?

The Take speaks to journalists who help round out the Russian dissident’s persona.

26 Mar 2021

Alexey Navalny is a man with many titles: Russian dissident, opposition leader, activist, investigator, lawyer. Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly refuses to say his name. But this larger-than-life persona leaves out a crucial part of Navalny’s past — his history of nationalism.

Russia’s Opposition Confronts a Future Without Navalny

March 16, 2021 06:37 PM

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It’s been two months (Jan. 18), since Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny returned home following a lengthy recovery abroad from a near fatal poisoning attack.  Navalny — and western governments — blame the Russian government for the attempt on his life — a charge the Kremlin denies.  Yet a Russian court has since sentenced Navalny to just over two and a-half years in prison for alleged past parole violations.  The question now: can Russia’s opposition thrive — or even survive — without its leading figure?  From Moscow for VOA, Charles Maynes reports.

Camera: Ricardo Marquina, Agencies, Produced by: Ricardo Marquina/Rob Raffaele

NOT A MONOLITH

Russian Opposition Beset by Infighting as Country Expects More Turmoil
By Jamie Dettmer

VOA
Updated February 11, 2021 


FILE - Opposition activists participate in a rally against Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, May 5, 2018.

A storied Russian liberal politician has sparked an outbreak of infighting among the country’s opposition groups after mounting a scathing attack on Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, arguing the path he would take the country down wouldn’t lead to a life free of repression.

“Everyone must decide whether to support Navalny or not,” Grigory Yavlinsky wrote this week. “But you need to understand. A democratic Russia, respect for people, and a life without fear and repression are incompatible with Navalny’s policies,” he added.

Yavlinsky, who ran twice for the Russia's presidency, in 1996 against Boris Yeltsin and in 2000 against Vladimir Putin, founded the Yabloko party, which favors free-market economics and social liberalism. He’s been critical of Navalny in the past and this week repeated his accusation that Navalny, Russia’s most high-profile opposition politician, is xenophobic and an authoritarian nationalist.

The attack by Yavlinsky has split the party he founded and triggered broader opposition infighting. It comes amid signs the recent protests against the Kremlin, and demands for Navalny to be freed from jail, are not resonating with most Russians, and that the paramilitary style crackdown on the dissenters is deterring others from considering protesting or enlisting in any future political action.

A poll conducted by the independent Levada Center carried out between January 29 and February 2 suggests there is little public appetite for agitation. Navalny survived a near-fatal poisoning, which he blames on the Kremlin and was arrested last month in Moscow on his return following life-saving treatment in Germany.

In the past two weeks, pro-Navalny supporters were on the streets in more than a hundred cities across Russia’s 11 time zones, with the largest protests mounted in the Russian capital and St. Petersburg. More than 11,000 people have been arrested at rallies opposing the jailing of Navalny, who started out as a blogger and became known as an anti-corruption campaigner.

FILE - Liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky participates in a march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, in central Moscow, Russia, Feb. 24, 2019.

The poll found that just 15% of Russians would be prepared to participate in future pro-Navalny protests, four percent less than the pollster found in November 2020. The percentage rose to 17% when asked if they would join rallies to protest economic conditions. Those figures represent Russians’ lowest willingness to protest since March 2018, according to the pollster.

The pollster also found that only 22% viewed the recent political protests positively. Younger respondents, who tend to get their news from the Internet and non-government media sources, viewed the protests slightly more favorably than older Russians, who generally receive their news and views from government-owned or controlled channels.

Government-sponsored channels have mounted unrelenting scorching attacks on Navalny and his allies, accusing them of being agents of foreign powers.

Among all respondents, two out of five said they view the protesters negatively. Another 37% expressed indifference to the political protests. Nonetheless, Russians do expect more political agitation in the future with 45% of people expecting more trouble, a jump from 23% last November, the highest it has been since 1998.

The poll findings are dismaying for Navalny supporters, who are in the process of taking stock and reorganizing to adjust for the high number of dedicated activists currently in detention. Navalny’s team last week said it intends to shift tactics and mount neighborhood flash mobs this Sunday instead of urging large numbers of supporters to take to the streets, risking more detentions and giving the security services an easy target to hit.

Neighborhood flash mobs is a tactic pro-democracy activists have been using in recent weeks in neighboring Belarus.

Navalny’s key aides are urging Russians to gather near their homes on February 14, Valentine’s Day, to shine torches and light candles in heart shapes. Navalny made multiple heart gestures to his wife Yulia in the courtroom where he was sentenced to two years and eight months on February 2.

FILE - A still image taken from video footage shows Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny making a hand gesture forming a heart during the announcement of his court verdict in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 2, 2021.

He was convicted of violating the terms of his parole from a 2014 sentence for fraud in a case his supporters, international rights groups and Western governments say is spurious and politically motivated.

Opposition infighting is par for the course. President Vladimir Putin’s foes are drawn from across the political spectrum, from right-wing ultra-nationalists to old-school Communists, and with a variety of liberal groups in the middle. In 2016, an effort to stitch together a broad alliance of opposition groups, called the Democratic Coalition, was short-lived.

It fell apart when the leaders, who were meant to be working together to try to gain political influence, resumed their competition and tried to elbow each other out of the way.

The Kremlin gave it the coup de grace when it leaked to the government-sponsored NTV channel a video of former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, a key liberal opposition politician, and one of the founders of the Democratic Coalition, in which he was heard disparaging his political partners.

Different coalition configurations were tried before and have been since, too, but keeping opposition groups marching, agitating and campaigning as one also has always been difficult and temporary. Yavlinsky’s public criticism of Navalny this week has exposed once again the splits and political animosities.

Navalny’s allies have urged Yabloko to expel Yavlinsky, and opposition social media forums have seen acrimonious exchanges, raising the prospect that opposition groups once again will end up squabbling and taking off in disparate directions in the run-up campaign to parliamentary elections in September.

Navalny was himself a member of Yabloko, but he was expelled in 2007 over what other members saw as unacceptable “nationalist” views. In the past, the Kremlin critic has participated in ultranationalist rallies and has been critical of migrants, using language his critics say make him unsuitable to be the figurehead of the opposition to Putin.

Navalny denies he is a xenophobe, and says he was expelled from Yabloko because he made little secret he wanted to replace Yavlinsky.

But some Yabloko leaders are infuriated with Yavlinsky’s attack, which they say is ill-timed and will put off voters. Other opposition figures say Yavlinsky shouldn’t criticize someone now in jail as a political prisoner and unable to defend himself.

Last week, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled former oil tycoon who emerged as a prominent critic of Putin after a 10-year spell in a Russian jail, said he disagrees with Navalny on some issues, “But when a person becomes a political prisoner he must be supported.”

In an interview on Echo of Moscow, an independent radio station, Yavlinsky noted he had also participated in the past in prohibited rallies. He added: “I support everyone who is in prison.”

But on Navalny’s Twitter account, which is handled currently by his team, Yavlinsky’s criticism was put down to “envy.”

Russian opposition party flourishes amid doubts over its reform credentials

Critics say New People is encouraged by the Kremlin as a spoiler for Navalny’s movement

Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 
Andrew E Kramer in Moscow

THE TEAL PARTY

Registration of attendees at the congress of the New People party in Moscow in August 2020. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin\TASS via Getty Images

Russian president Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he doesn’t tolerate dissent, but one new opposition party has flourished. And that party, curiously, has been speaking out on the same themes of fighting corruption and repression that have made opposition leader Alexei Navalny enemy No 1 of the Kremlin, with the government about to ship him off to a penal colony.

The new party thrives even as Navalny’s own party has been banned. The reasons, Russian analysts say, are to undermine Navalny, distract from his movement and divide the liberal opposition – all while providing a veneer of multiparty politics in a country where there is little meaningful electoral choice.

The new party, called New People, seems designed to appeal to Navalny’s followers. “For two decades, we lived in a situation of a false choice: either freedom or order,” its platform proclaims. The government, it says, “should stop seeing enemies and traitors in those who have other points of view”.

The Kremlin has worked on many fronts to destroy Navalny’s movement – arresting his supporters at protests and, according to Navalny and western governments, trying to assassinate him last year. Government officials have smeared him as a stooge of western intelligence agencies, and government-backed flash mobs have sprung up to support Putin.

But Navalny has also faced a steady stream of competing anti-corruption reformers who seem to operate with the government’s blessing – most recently New People, which has been revving up its campaign for parliamentary elections in September, when Navalny will be in a penal colony.

The founder of a cosmetics company, Alexei Nechayev, established the party last year to channel what he described as opposition sentiment in society, much as Navalny has been doing. But Nechayev refrains from direct criticism of Putin and is not calling for his ousting.

   

New People party founder Alexei Nechayev at last August’s congress. 

Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin\TASS via Getty Images

Navalny and his allies greeted the arrival of New People with disdain, identifying Nechayev as the latest in a long line of political doubles conjured up by the Kremlin to try to unseat Navalny from his leadership of discontented young professionals.

“They are trying to feed us the line these New People will now be the real competition for United Russia, ” Lyubov Sobol, a Navalny ally, said of the governing pro-Putin party in a YouTube analysis after the new party’s appearance last year.

“It’s kind of funny,” she added. “They say the right things, more or less, but obviously won’t ever do anything. They are simply spoilers.”

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‘Managed democracy’

Russia’s political system is sometimes called “managed democracy”, for the practice of Kremlin political advisers creating, mentoring or funding supposed opposition figures and parties – and tolerating some others as long as they don’t criticise Putin directly.

These parties are allowed to compete among themselves, venting some steam in the population, while providing the necessary losers to create an illusion of choice in elections that the governing party mostly wins. Variants of such fig-leaf democratic systems exist around the world in autocratic countries.

Outside a few monarchies in the Middle East and remaining communist dictatorships like North Korea, elections, even if they are rigged, are the only accepted means of legitimising power today.

This gloss on Russia’s iron-fisted rule emerged in the early 2000s under a former domestic political adviser to Putin, Vladislav Surkov, though Surkov has since been elbowed aside. In the last presidential election in 2018, Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite who is reputed to be a goddaughter of Putin, filled the ersatz opposition role while Navalny was banned from running.

Similarly, New People allows Russians who support Navalny’s modernising agenda to vote for a legal alternative, without the headache of arrests and repression.

Nechayev denied he consulted with the Kremlin before forming the party, which now has 72 regional offices, having added two just in the last week, and actually won a smattering of seats last autumn in regional elections.

Still, political analysts have dismissed the idea that the party emerged without the Kremlin’s blessing. In Russia, “the real opposition is the unregistered parties”, Andrei Kolesnikov, a political scientist at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in a telephone interview.

‘Red lines’

In an interview in the party’s spacious headquarters in an upscale office tower in Moscow, Nechayev listed the three conditions for registering a political party: refraining from criticism of Putin or his family, avoiding foreign financing and abstaining from unsanctioned street protests.

“We don’t violate these three red lines,” he said. “Often, and especially in the West, Russia is presented as just Putin and Navalny”, but many Russians want a moderate opposition, he said. “Most people understand the world is not black and white.”

However useful in blunting movements like Navalny’s, managed democracy hasn’t always gone smoothly. On rare occasions, politicians derided as Kremlin puppets have pivoted to real opposition.

Members of Just Russia, a party Surkov helped form in 2006 to fill the fake centre-left opposition slot in Russian politics, did just that in 2011 with an endorsement of a previous street protest movement led by Navalny.

One of those politicians, Gennady Gudkov, has since fled Russia and speaks openly of the Kremlin’s hand in faux opposition parties, a threat the real opposition faces in parallel with police crackdowns.

Of Surkov’s pivotal role in creating Just Russia, “there were no secrets”, Gudkov said in a telephone interview from Bulgaria.

In a macabre twist, one political figure believed to have arisen as a fake, or managed, copy of Navalny has even died in what Bellingcat, the open-source research organisation, has documented as a likely assassination with poison.

As an anti-corruption blogger, Nikita Isayev and his group New Russia had mimicked many of Navalny’s tactics, uncovering corruption among low-level officials. He was called “the New Navalny”. He refrained, though, from criticising Putin.

Isayev died suddenly at age 41 on an overnight train ride in 2019. Among the potential motives Bellingcat identified was palace intrigue. Isayev was seen as affiliated with Surkov, so when Surkov fell from favour, according to this theory, his Kremlin rivals arranged to eliminate his fake Navalny, too.