Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin\u2019s Russia<\/em>. <\/p>\nThat provided ammunition to a growing cadre of opposition activists looking for a catalyzing cause \u2014 Alexei Navalny among them. <\/p>\n
Who is Alexei Navalny?<\/p>\n
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\u2019d get extraordinary access by becoming a minority shareholder in the company in order to ask probing questions.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to thank Alexei Navalny,\u201d a young activist shouted in a room of organizers the day before demonstrations began. \u201cThanks 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 \u2018the Party of Swindlers and Thieves.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Navalny rode that wave of popularity to a run for Moscow\u2019s mayor in 2013. It\u2019s 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\u2019d mean Navalny was clawing his way into Russia\u2019s inner circle of power.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 2008 war in Georgia. Duke University\u2019s Irina Soboleva told me that the candidate\u2019s hardline stances during the campaign alienated members of Navalny\u2019s young, urban base.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider Aleksei Navalny the most dangerous man in Russia,\u201d Engelina Tareyeva, who worked with Navalny in a Russian liberal party until he was expelled from it in 2007, wrote of him. \u201cYou don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Navalny didn\u2019t 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\u2019s strong showing \u2014 despite very long odds \u2014 gave him the legitimacy and standing to seek more power.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis ambitions were greater than just being the leader of the urban middle class,\u201d Soboleva said.<\/p>\n
Putin regained popularity. Navalny organized against him.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s fold and because Kyiv was on the verge of an economic pact with the European Union. For Putin, such a deal meant Ukraine \u2014 long in Russia\u2019s sphere of influence \u2014 was tilting away from Moscow. The incursion, then, was both punishment and raw geopolitics.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cCrimea bought the regime four years of wiggle room,\u201d Columbia\u2019s Frye told me.<\/p>\n
That period was mostly a quiet one for Russia\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But the opposition leader wasn\u2019t discouraged. Instead, experts told me he developed a three-pronged strategy to prepare for whenever Putin was vulnerable again.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a sound political strategy,\u201d 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\u2019s most corrupt countries, and the problems this corruption has wrought have impacted nearly every Russian\u2019s life. No other issue, the thinking went, would be as universally understood and enraging.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cHe saw the political utility of YouTube before other opposition leaders,\u201d said George Washington University\u2019s Snegovaya.<\/p>\n
The opposition leader has posted video after embarrassing video exposing the corruption of Russia\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
When the Russian government succeeds in blocking access to the expos\u00e9s, Navalny and his team place the videos elsewhere \u2014 including on pornography sites \u2014 so anyone can see them.<\/p>\n
The success of his YouTube channel bolstered Navalny\u2019s reputation as an anti-corruption crusader, and his audience grew. \u201cHe sensed that corruption would be accessible enough to build a large following on the internet,\u201d Snegovaya noted.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s United Russia party. Providing candidates with financing and know-how, Navalny\u2019s team has helped dissidents take power away from Putin cronies in regional elections across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no opposition figure in Russia that has the network that Navalny does,\u201d said Columbia\u2019s Frye.<\/p>\n
The main goal, of course, was to weaken the president\u2019s party nationwide. But experts told me the side effect \u2014 Russians suddenly being able to see politicians without ties to Putin actually working in citizens\u2019 interests \u2014 was equally important for Navalny\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n
Putin fought back. Navalny withstood the onslaught.<\/p>\n
Navalny didn\u2019t get to do all of that without pushback, especially after he announced in 2016 that he would run for president in two years. <\/p>\n
In 2017, the opposition leader was attacked with an antiseptic known as \u201cbrilliant green\u201d outside his Moscow office, covering half of his face in what looked like paint. \u201cIt looks funny but it hurts like hell,\u201d he tweeted at the time, adding that he lost 80 percent of the vision in his right eye. <\/p>\n
Reports later confirmed he suffered a chemical burn. It\u2019s still unclear who was responsible, but Navalny, unsurprisingly, blamed the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Later that year, 12 of Russia\u2019s 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 \u2014 the vote was already rigged in Putin\u2019s favor, and reliable polls showed the dissident failed to attract much support \u2014 but the decision once again ended the pretense of a functioning democracy in Russia.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s interest in Navalny didn\u2019t end there. Moscow\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The increased harassment made clear that Navalny was a prime Putin target. The worst, though, was yet to come.<\/p>\n
Putin got scared. Navalny paid the price.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, near Kazakhstan, where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital. But Navalny\u2019s condition worsened, and he fell into a coma before he arrived at the facility.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Navalny was first treated, became the site of a frustrating standoff between Navalny\u2019s family and supporters and the doctors overseeing his care. Navalny\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The physicians at the time said Navalny wasn\u2019t poisoned but instead suffered from a \u201cmetabolic disorder\u201d that led to low blood sugar. \u201cPoisons or traces of their presence in the body have not been identified,\u201d Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief doctor at the Omsk emergency hospital, told reporters at the time. \u201cThe diagnosis of \u2018poisoning\u2019 remains somewhere in the back of our minds, but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Navalny\u2019s team \u2014 including Navalnaya, who was barred from seeing her husband in the hospital \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe medics are being totally commanded by the FSB and hardly release anything,\u201d Vladimir Milov, a close Navalny associate, told me while Navalny was in the Russian hospital, using the acronym for Russia\u2019s Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB responsible for internal security.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Navalnaya said in another press conference on August 21.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t stable enough to travel, before finally allowing the German physicians to take a look at the patient\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n
Luckily, doctors in Berlin successfully treated Navalny, leading to his release from the hospital on September 23 after a full recovery. <\/p>\n
The next month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons \u2014 the world\u2019s top chemical weapons watchdog \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Navalny confirmed that himself while he remained in Germany. Working with CNN last December, Navalny tricked a Russian agent \u2014 part of an elite FSB toxin team that had trailed him for three years \u2014 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 \u201cthe insides, the crotch\u201d of the dissident\u2019s underpants. <\/p>\n
When asked about the Kremlin\u2019s 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, \u201cthey would\u2019ve probably finished it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The first is that United Russia\u2019s supermajority in the nation\u2019s legislature \u2014 the Duma \u2014 is under threat in September\u2019s elections. Navalny\u2019s organizing and Putin\u2019s unpopularity due to a flatlining economy and worsening pandemic could lead some Putin-allied lawmakers to lose. If that\u2019s the case, Putin would no longer be able to ram whatever he wants through the governing body.<\/p>\n
Putin could try to rig the election, of course, but George Washington University\u2019s Snegovaya told me that \u201cit\u2019s impossible to rig the election completely.\u201d Fewer people actually support the president right now, she said, and international observers watch the vote closely. The dictator\u2019s brutal calculation therefore might have been that killing Navalny would hurt the opposition\u2019s chances ahead of the crucial election.<\/p>\n
The other possibility experts floated was that Putin is worried about the revolution in neighboring Belarus. A strong opposition formed against Alexander Lukashenko, Europe\u2019s longest-serving dictator and a staunch Putin ally, and revolts started last year after an election many believe he rigged. Demonstrations haven\u2019t stopped, and Putin, who is notoriously concerned about being toppled in a revolution, might fear a similar phenomenon in his country.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutin definitely follows what\u2019s going on in Belarus closely, and he takes what\u2019s happening very personally,\u201d Duke\u2019s Soboleva told me. Putin might be thinking \u201cif you don\u2019t eliminate your political opponents and rivals early, they might be a big problem for you later,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But instead of eliminating Navalny, Putin made him stronger.<\/p>\n
Putin tried to silence his rival. Navalny just gained a larger audience.<\/p>\n
After Navalny recovered from the poisoning, the Kremlin did everything possible to try to dissuade him from returning to Russia.<\/p>\n
Late last year, the Kremlin placed him on the government\u2019s 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 \u2014 but that\u2019s hard to do while you\u2019re in a coma.<\/p>\n
Even with the threat of arrest hanging over him, Navalny flew to Moscow on January 17 while downplaying widespread fears that he\u2019d be detained upon arrival. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible,\u201d he told people aboard his flight. \u201cI feel like a citizen of Russia who has every right to return to my home.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, of course, it proved completely possible: Video showed an official approaching Navalny at Moscow\u2019s Sheremetyevo Airport near passport control. Navalny then kissed his wife, Yulia, before going with the official and other guards. He\u2019s been held by the federal prison service ever since as he awaits his February trial.<\/p>\n
But Navalny and his team have fought back. They released the \u201cPutin Palace\u201d video \u2014 alleging that the Russian leader has used bribe money to build an estate on land 39 times larger than the principality of Monaco \u2014 which had the president answering questions raised by the man he wants silenced. <\/p>\n
\u201cNothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did,\u201d Putin said during a video call at the time, as always refusing to say Navalny\u2019s name. But many people didn\u2019t buy his denial. <\/p>\n
Russians erupted in protest after the video\u2019s release and Navalny\u2019s detention. The nation\u2019s 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 \u2014 ranging from snowball fights to physical violence \u2014 culminating in the arrest of nearly 4,000 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably the most nervous he\u2019s been in his 21 years in power,\u201d Georgetown\u2019s Stent, who served as the US national intelligence officer for Russia from 2004 to 2006, said of Putin at the time.<\/p>\n
Moscow police\u2019s responded forcefully. They arrested Navalny\u2019s brother and harassed multiple members of Navalny\u2019s team. In one stunning video, Navalny\u2019s doctor was seen playing the piano as law enforcement searched her home. The goal, experts said, is to stop the opposition from inciting more protests and continuing their leader\u2019s work while he remains in custody.<\/p>\n
So far that plan hasn\u2019t worked, and Navalny\u2019s hunger strike kept him in the global spotlight even as Putin has tried to push him out of it. <\/p>\n
The hunger strike may be over, but it\u2019s still possible that Navalny dies in Russian custody. If that happens, it\u2019s possible the pro-democracy movement he built will suffer. At that point, Putin may have won his long game with Navalny in the cruelest fashion possible. Or, ironically, turned Navalny into a powerful martyr, potentially threatening his rule long after the dissident is gone.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The greatest challenger to Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s rule is a man whose name the dictator won\u2019t say and whom he has tried to kill: Alexei Navalny. Having defiantly returned to Russia after surviving a brazen assassination attempt only to be immediately detained and thrown in jail upon arrival, the opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}