By Henry Srebrnik. [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
A nationwide referendum held last summer on amendments to Russia’s constitution allows President Vladimir Putin another 12 years in power after his current term ends in 2024, should he win two more presidential elections.
His main political opponent is not some ordinary politician, but opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been gaining momentum despite efforts by the government to stop him – including, perhaps, even trying to murder him.
The 44-year-old anti-corruption activist has been waging the battle against Putin for more than a decade, as a lawyer and a blogger, through his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, during his run for mayor of Moscow in 2013, and in his abortive 2018 run for president.
Navalny was prevented from becoming a candidate in the election because of an embezzlement conviction that he says was politically motivated. He has continued to take his battle to the streets, saying protests are justified to encourage political change.
Navalny doesn’t mince words. He calls Putin’s United Russia party full of “crooks and thieves” and accuses the president of “sucking the blood out of Russia” through a “feudal state” concentrating power in the Kremlin. But he is no western puppet – for instance, he has also said the Crimea, which was wrested from Ukraine by Putin in 2014, should remain part of Russia.
Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in Siberia in August in what has been described as an assassination attempt by the Russian state.
He was administered Novichok, a potent neurotoxin, and fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The pilot made an emergency landing and Navalny was flown to Berlin where he spent weeks in a coma.
He was airlifted to Germany and recovered. After flying home to Moscow from Berlin Jan. 17, he was arrested at passport control, ostensibly for violating the parole terms from a suspended sentence he received six years ago.
On Jan. 23, tens of thousands of people across Russia called for his release. Videos showed protesters scuffling with police officers who were swinging batons and kicking them. More than 4,000 people were detained in more than 100 cities.
More protests Jan. 30 saw police arrest more than 4,000 people across the country, including 1,167 in Moscow and 862 in St Petersburg. There were further arrests Feb. 2 when a Moscow court on Feb. 2 ordered Navalny to prison for two years and eight months on parole violation charge. In a message from jail, Navalny urged Russians to stage new rallies.
“I think it's only the beginning of problems for the regime,” argues Andrei Kolesnikov of the Moscow Carnegie Centre. “It's not just the political opposition, but civil society that’s irritated by the cruelty.”
Navalny knows how to get under Putin’s skin. He has exposed the corruption of officials and tapped into growing discontent. In the days before the protests, his Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation describing a lavish secret palace built for Putin on the Black Sea that cost the equivalent of more than $1 billion.
Putin denied the charges; it was built by billionaire Arkady Rotenberg. But the video has been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube, a record number for the platform in Russia.
“We will live normally only when we stop tolerating officials who steal and re-electing them,” contends Navalny. “And if they refuse to hold fair elections, then we’ll take to the streets and remove them from power in this way.”
The next likely flash point will come with parliamentary elections in autumn, when Navalny had plans to “decimate” the pro-Kremlin United Russia party at the polls. But now he’ll be in prison.
The Kremlin has long painted Navalny as an “agent” of the West bent on undermining Russia. A news anchor on Russia’s state-controlled Channel One suggested that the United States, with a Democratic president now in the White House, had in fact organized the protests.
Navalny had spent a student year in the U.S. as part of the Yale University World Fellows program in 2010. “As they say, draw your own conclusions,” he told viewers. But perhaps Russians are drawing different conclusions.
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