Alexei Navalny, the 'nobody' who became a threat to Putin

Xavier Colás

Updated Friday, February 16, 2024-13:24

• Russia The Kremlin's license to kill, exposed

• Russia Navalny dissolves his political movement before justice outlaws it

One morning in August 2020, Russians woke up hearing about a supposedly insignificant man who had been poisoned with one of the most powerful poisons, which turned out to be the dreaded novichok.

Alexei Anatolievich Navalny

(Odintsovo, Moscow, 1976), Russian lawyer and politician, was for years the main opponent of Vladimir Putin's regime and was currently serving a sentence in a prison in the Yamalo-Nenets region, in Russia, where he has dead, as announced by the prison service.

From the pro-government ranks it was said for years that Navalny was insignificant outside Moscow's urban and liberal circles. In hindsight, he was often presented as the opposite:

a nationalist

- or even a fascist - who constituted such a risk to the state that

his movement had been dismantled;

his close or remote collaborators, vetoed in all elections; and even his web pages were blocked. The media that has followed his investigations were persecuted.

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Alexei Navalny: poor in popularity, rich in enemies

• Editor: XAVIER COLÁS Saint Petersburg

Alexei Navalny: poor in popularity, rich in enemies

The atmosphere has become tense in the country

. "The Kremlin's approach has changed, the regime is more vulnerable, the Duma elections are in September [2021] and after years of ignoring them they begin to repress. Now their

organizations are equated with terrorists

and described as dangerous" Ben Noble stated then. , co-author of the most ambitious biography of Navalny ever published,

Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, the Future of Russia?

with Jan Matti Dollbaum and Morvan Lallouet.

For Noble it was clear that the reason for poisoning Navalny is that he and his people "crossed some red lines." In 2018 he "tried to run for office," a direct challenge to Putin that followed with "investigations of his palace on the Black Sea." Until August 20, 2020, the majority opinion was that Navalny was more harmful dead than alive. "I was also surprised by the poisoning; given how well known it was, it was understood that it was counterproductive. Putin and the Presidential Administration have created a political system without challenges. But it seems that if they arise they must be suppressed" explained the author from his home in London a year after the poisoning of the opponent.

In his role as an outlaw, he loses popularity

One of the debates during these years has been the extent to which Navalny is a threat to Putin. "If they faced each other, Putin would win according to the polls and his popularity ratings. But we would have to see what would happen if there was a prolonged period of freedom, including that of the media."

The attack against Navalny relaunched his popularity. Now, in the outlaw role of him, he has lost some of the shine from him.

Acceptance of him has fallen to 14%.

"It's interesting, it was 20%, and now we would have to know if those Russians have surrendered or if they are afraid to respond, which would not be strange considering the leaks that have occurred of names of people who attended their rallies , you can already be accused of extremism just for that."

Thanks to Navalny's 'martyrdom', some Russians have begun to find out in which country they live. The Bellingcat platform presented the results of its investigation: Navalny had been poisoned by a team from the Russian security service FSB specialized in toxic substances that had been following him for a long time and had already tried it in the past. This was demonstrated by call and flight records, which placed the agents in the same places and on the same dates as Navalny and his family.

Too many coincidences.

The evidence against the Russian government went from obvious to surreal on December 21, when Navalny released a video - recorded before the investigation was released - in which he posed as an assistant to an FSB chief and managed to speak with Konstantin Kudriavstev, one of the agents who allegedly participated in the operation. Kudriavstev went on to specify where he had placed the poison: "In the underpants, on the inside."

Navalny decided to return to Russia in January 2021. The government chose to divert the plane to land at another airport where no one was expecting it and stopped it immediately.

The anti-corruption leader went to jail for corruption.

He was the hope of some Russian liberals, but official spokespersons presented him as a far-right nationalist. Noble and his colleagues intervened in this debate: "In the book we conclude that he is center-right, and that would be the case if Russia were a country with a multi-party regime." Noble admits that Navalny "in the past had flirted with nationalism, with even racist statements," but "in recent years he had given some economic messages close to the left.

He says he wants to be a normal politician, but we don't know how he would behave." in an open system.

There are examples in the nineties, politicians who promised a lot and called themselves democrats and then were not so much."

Looking to the future, it was already difficult to be optimistic about his destiny. "With the new charges they wanted to keep him off the streets for longer and probably several years in prison;

the Kremlin wants people to forget his name

. "

But the dissidents are looking for other avenues. "Navalny's movement has been destroyed. But the energy that drove them will remain."

Navalny and his people were left out of the elections. "They have declared half the country extremists to take over all the electoral districts," the opponent then criticized in a publication on Instagram through his lawyers.

"They have not let strong candidates [run]

for the elections... they are afraid of 'smart voting,'" Navalny said, referring to the system he put in place to redirect the dissatisfied vote against any candidate who is well placed to remove the seat in dispute to United Russia. Navalny asked his followers to

boycott

the government party and encouraged them to register on a website where, depending on their electoral district, they will be told which party to vote for to effectively reduce the majority of United Russia.