However, when Russian President Vladimir Putin denied at his annual press conference that the Federal Security Service had tried to assassinate Alexei Navalny, he acknowledged a key fact: that the FSB, after all, overshadows the opposition politician.

Not to assassinate him, Putin asserted, but to investigate the links with foreign powers that Navalny is repeatedly accused of by the Russian authorities and its state media.

"If they really wanted to, they would have put an end to him," Putin said.

Bildt: FSB "cursed"

One with his own experience of this is Sweden's former Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who has appeared several times in Russian state reporting on Navalny, even this year when the anti-corruption activist returned to Moscow.

When the two met in 2016, a previous meeting had just been filmed and broadcast on Russian television.

This time they knew they were filmed and changed meeting rooms at the last second to avoid the monitors, according to Bildt.

- Then they did not find us and could not record the conversation, he says in the latest episode of SVT's Foreign Office.

- The FSB were cursed in any case and there was a long harangue in Russian television where they disliked this coincidence.

Changing image

Russian power has historically said very little about Alexei Navalny, and Putin does not name him.

But the dramatic news development around Navalny has, according to many observers, made it impossible for state media to remain silent.

The emphasis in the media description of him has then also shifted.

From the state media's emphasis on Navalny as right-wing extremist in favor of the image of a lackey to Western countries.

Navalny has a real history as a outspoken nationalist and has been criticized for racist statements.

For state media, however, there has been no particularly effective basis for criticism of him, according to Alexander Verkhovsky at the anti-racist Russian Soviet Center.

It is a fact that Navalny previously belonged to the nationalist phalanx, but xenophobia is also widespread in Russia and many are not very supported.

- It will not be very good propaganda, he says.

- It is much easier and more effective to say that he may be a German spy or something similar.

This week's Foreign Office is about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny - is he the hero of the Russian people or a political populist?

Watch here on SVT Play, or 22.00 on Tuesday on SVT2.