Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is about to disturb Russia’s laziest month. As in Soviet times, the New Year holiday stretches halfway through this month, allowing time for Russians to drink, eat oranges and watch nostalgic 1970s romantic comedies. Politics usually gets put on hold — but perhaps not this year, with Navalny’s planned return from Berlin today, following his poisoning in August last year.
The end of last year signaled that this edition of January would be different, because we Russians learned that Navalny, the country’s main opposition leader, was the target of a murder plot that was almost certainly carried out at the Kremlin’s behest. Instead of protecting us, the FSB, the Russian intelligence service and successor to the KGB, has been busy trying to eliminate the regime’s opponents.
An investigation conducted by journalists from Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN has provided a clear picture of the Kremlin’s operation to poison Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok during his trip to the Siberian city of Tomsk in August last year.
It is Navalny’s luck that the FSB’s former mastery of the dark arts has atrophied over time. The operation failed and Navalny is now openly — and sometimes almost comedically — exposing his assailants, one of whom, believing that he was speaking to someone in the “system,” revealed operational details of the plot over the telephone. It was Navalny, who recorded the call.
What more should be needed to provoke public indignation? Surveying my colleagues at the independent TV station Dozhd, most agreed that Navalny should be last year’s Person of the Year. His fearless quest to hold the powerful accountable has earned the respect of thousands, if not millions.
However, in another survey, just 61 percent of Russians report having “heard something” about Navalny’s poisoning and only 17 percent said they had been following the story closely. Worse, 30 percent responded that there was no poisoning — believing that it was all an act — and another 19 percent agreed that it was “a provocation of Western intelligence agencies.” A mere 15 percent recognized it “as an attempt by the authorities to eliminate a political opponent.”
These findings demonstrate two things: First, a large share of Russians still watch and believe state television, and are not seeking alternative opinions and news sources, such as on YouTube, where more discerning Russian news consumers turn.
Second, and more disturbing, many Russians simply do not care. About 44 percent of Russians likely heard about this heinous crime, but either are not bothered enough by it to learn more, or are in a state of fearful denial about their own political leaders’ actions.
For similar reasons, most Russians would not countenance mass protests. Last month, following the investigation into Navalny’s poisoning, only a few rights advocates openly dissented.
For example, the film director Vitaly Mansky showed up at the FSB building with a piece of underwear, in reference to the revelation that this might have been the sartorial means by which the Novichok was administered. Mansky’s witty antic might have been noticed by other creative types, but it fell far short of spurring a broader protest movement.
To be sure, a Russian winter does not offer ideal conditions for taking to the streets, although, back in the early 2010s, hundreds of thousands of Russians braved freezing temperatures to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency, following his brief stint as prime minister.
Moreover, in this day and age, Russians could voice their objections to the Kremlin’s actions online and in many other ways. They could demand an objective, independent investigation, and discuss the matter on social networks.
As president, Putin surely knows the details of the assassination attempt. He knows that US intelligence had nothing to do with it, and yet he has claimed that Navalny is backed by “American special services,” and that the Bellingcat investigation is based on selectively leaked “US intelligence materials.”
Although he acknowledges that Navalny was under surveillance, he points out that this is standard practice.
However, if Washington is only guilty of giving information to Bellingcat, there is still the question asked of Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment: Who did it, then?
The Kremlin offers no answer to that.
Among Putin’s greatest fears is that someone in his immediate circle will betray him, opening the door for a “color revolution” of the kind seen in Georgia and Ukraine in the early 2000s. He has repeatedly described mass political protests in post-Soviet states as “illegal coups” arranged by the West.
Although he never refers to Navalny by name in public, he regularly compares him with Mikheil Saakashvili, one of the leaders of Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution.
By contrast, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko falls into the category of “our son of a bitch,” because he refuses to surrender to a “color revolution.”
Is a “color revolution” even possible in Russia, given that even a government operation to murder an opposition leader is not enough to provoke national indignation? Likewise, few Russians batted an eye last summer when Putin rewrote the constitution to extend his rule at least until 2036.
Russia’s past — both Soviet and czarist — has taught today’s Russians that separation from the leader generally comes only with his death. Under Putin, many Russians — especially older generations — have come to embody a combination of imperial longing and fear of the external (and eternal) enemy.
Life under this leader might not be ideal, but, as Navalny and his supporters have learned, it is not bad enough.
Ekaterina Kotrikadze is a correspondent and anchor at Dozhd TV, Russia’s only remaining independent network.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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