Crowds of people thank A. Navalny and call V. Putin a murderer – the first arrests have begun
The first arrests began during the farewell to Alexei Navalny.
“The person you mentioned”: how A. Navalnas pursued V. Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has never mentioned the name of Alexei Navalny, but the most important opponent of the Russian leader still successfully kept him quiet.
However, it is not yet clear how the opposition figure’s influence will last after his death.
In the last decade, V. Putin always found ways to avoid the word “Naval” in his speeches.
“The citizen you mentioned”, “that person” and “this gentleman” – these are the phrases V. Putin used to describe A. Navalny when answering the same question about him after talks with the President of the United States Joe Biden (Joe Biden) in Geneva in June 2021 .
That same month, in an interview with American television, V. Putin was asked if he could promise that A. Navalny would leave prison safe and sound. The Russian leader responded, according to the Kremlin transcript: “I hope that the same methods will be applied to the person you mentioned […] just like other people in prison.”
When the interviewer mentioned Navalny’s name, Putin replied: “He is one of those people who is in prison.”
But Putin’s avoidance of naming the man who, in the space of a decade and a half, rose from an anti-corruption blogger known mostly to Moscow’s liberals and Western media to become his main opponent masked his personal concerns about Navalny.
On February 16, A. Navalny died in a prison in the Russian Arctic, and his supporters blame the Kremlin for this. He will be buried in Moscow on Friday.
“His Worst Secret”
During the 2011-2012 protests, A. Navalny proclaimed: “We can occupy the Kremlin,” and in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, the only time he was allowed to run, he performed well against the pro-Kremlin incumbent of the capital.
A. Navalny also created a support network outside the capital and St. Petersburg, as well as in Siberia.
To attract attention, Navalny circulated cleverly crafted videos online that began with his laconic phrase, “Privet, eto Navalnyj!” (“Hello, it’s Navalny!”). In these posts, he accused the Kremlin elite and V. Putin himself of large-scale corruption.
The most famous recording was a nearly two-hour film released in 2021, which claimed that the Russian leader illegally and secretly built himself a palace in the south of the country.
This video, which has collected about 130 million views on YouTube. views, appeared after Navalny was arrested after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was being treated for poisoning with the Soviet-made nerve agent Novichok. He blamed the Kremlin for his poisoning.
“We agreed that we will release the film only when I return home to Moscow, because we did not want the main character of the film (V. Putin) to think that we are afraid of him and that I will reveal his worst secret while I am abroad,” A. Navalny said in the video .
Analysts believe that the Kremlin controls the Russian media, society and politics so much that A. Navalny could never have posed a serious challenge to V. Putin during the elections.
But his charisma, courage and the taboo-breaking nature of his activities would have given the Kremlin a major headache.
“There is overwhelming evidence that the Putin regime sought to destroy Navalny, his team and the entire movement,” said Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London and author of Navalny: Putin’s Enemy, Russia’s Future?Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?) co-author.
“The Kremlin is becoming increasingly intolerant of alternative political views, and Mr. Navalny was that alternative: a charismatic, vocal critic of Putin,” Mr. Noble told the AFP news agency.
Is victory inevitable?
Navalny conducted “the most rigorous research the country has ever seen into the endless cynicism and corruption of the country’s rulers” and “presented an alternative to a giant nation,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Center for Strategic Studies in Russia.
It is not yet clear how deeply Navalny’s popularity has taken hold in Russia and how he has been affected by the repressive measures introduced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In January 2023, a survey published by the independent polling center “Levada” states that 9 percent of respondents approved of A. Navalno’s activities. This is half less than in September 2020, when 20% supported it. of those interviewed.
“Given the way the state media has vilified Navalny and blocked him in various ways, we will never know how popular he would have been in a free Russia,” Noble said.
Until his death, Navalny remained persistent and predicted the end of Putin’s rule in his messages from prison, which his team shared on social networks.
“It will collapse and fall apart. A Putinist state is not sustainable […]. Victory is inevitable,” he wrote in January.
But analysts warn that since the 2000s, when Navalny openly led protests and conducted domestic corruption investigations, Russia has been replaced by repression and the invasion of Ukraine.
“Despair is growing because of his horrible death and the cynical attempts of the authorities to prevent the funeral,” said consulting company R. Politik” founder Tatiana Stanovaja. This could have dire consequences, she warned.
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2024-04-21 06:39:41