The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny survived a poison attack.
But the attack says a lot about what has become of Russia.
Alexei Navalny, Russia's most influential opposition activist, was poisoned in the summer - apparently with warfare agent Novichok.
The Kremlin is strongly suspected of being responsible for the attack.
One question remains hotly debated: why should the Kremlin poison Alexei Navalny now of all times?
The analysis by authors Amy McKinnon from September 2020 provides answers.
This article is available in German for the first time - it was first published on September 10, 2020 by the magazine "Foreign Policy".
Moscow
- In the weeks after
Russia's opposition leader Alexei Navalny
collapsed in pain on a flight to Moscow, allegations that it was anything other than a state-directed assassination attempt increasingly lost credibility.
After Navalny was flown from the Siberian city of Omsk to Berlin for medical treatment,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced
that he
had been poisoned
with
Novitschok
- the same military nerve
agent used
in the
poisoning of Sergei Skripal
by Russian intelligence officials in England in 2018 Use came.
And
Russia
apparently went one step further: According to a report by the German weekly newspaper
Die Zeit
, Navalny appears to have
been poisoned
by a previously unknown and deadly
further development of the nerve
agent in the attack
.
An attack that could only
have been commissioned
by the
Kremlin
.
Crucial questions remain.
Why was the decision taken to poison the country's most famous opposition politician?
What does this say about the direction Russia is taking?
And - with regard to possible reactions from Western governments, above all Angela Merkel -
what price
might
Russia pay
for this?
Russia: why was Navalny poisoned?
Kremlin critics and opposition politicians have been poisoned or even murdered all too often in the past, but up until August, the very survival of Navalny's cause gave rise to suspicion.
At a meeting with members of the
opposition
in the city of Tomsk on the evening before his poisoning, Navalny himself pointed out exactly this problem.
"If they kill me, it will only lead to more problems for those in power, just like it was in the case of Nemtsov," he said
, according to
Der Spiegel
.
Navalny was referring to the opposition politician
Boris Nemtsov
, who was shot near the Kremlin in 2015.
"With the assassination of Nemtsov, Russia became a country where members of the opposition die a violent death," said
Sam Greene
, director of the
Russia Institute at King's College London
.
"If you think now that [the poisoning of Navalny] is a major turning point, I don't think you are paying attention."
The Navalny case raised questions: why now?
For a long time Navalny was seen as too well known and too popular to be secretly removed from the scene.
When news leaked that he had been poisoned, analyst Tatiana Stanowaya stated that his death
would be judged to be
a
“nightmare
scenario
” in the Kremlin
, one that could spark mass protests against the regime, which has been losing popularity in recent years Has.
The calculation with regard to the constitutional referendum held earlier this year, which enabled Russian President Vladimir Putin to run for two more terms, seems to be changing - and signals that even the outward appearance of a democracy no longer needs to be maintained.
Navalny: Russia is changing - "we are dealing with a completely different political system"
“After the constitutional reform, we are dealing with a completely different political system.
This regime is much more conservative, less tolerant, more repressive, ”said Tatjana Stanowaya, the founder of R. Politik, a political analysis company.
"Now we have to adjust to things that we could not have expected before with Putin's regime," she added.
The constitutional referendum made it clear to the Kremlin that
domestic politics had
become increasingly difficult, Greene said.
According to Greene, amid growing
impatience with Putin and his party,
along with a haphazard response to the corona pandemic, "the usual ideological levers are ineffective".
"That led to the impulse in the Kremlin to make clear ship with the challengers."
Shortly after the referendum, popular
region governor Sergei Furgal was
arrested and charged with commissioning several murders in the mid-2000s.
This action was seen as politically motivated and triggered weeks of protests in the Far Eastern
region of Khabarovsk
.
Several other opposition politicians, political activists and journalists were arrested in Russia during the referendum, which is to be understood as a sign of a tougher crackdown.
Putin's power struggle: why is Navalny a thorn in the side of the Kremlin?
Navalny is Russia's most famous and influential opposition politician and was once called the man
Putin fears most
.
By targeting one of the most volatile issues facing the Russian electorate, Navalny and his team have repeatedly exposed the
massive corruption of
some of Russia's most senior politicians.
In a 2017 investigation, it was alleged that then Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev
took bribes totaling
one billion dollars
in order to buy sumptuous country estates.
This sparked
nationwide protests
in the Russian core areas, which were traditionally considered to be the
stronghold of Putin's supporters
.
Until recently, the Kremlin appeared
to tolerate
some protests from
Moscow liberals
- and even tried to use them against them.
"Before 2017, the Kremlin's stance on the opposition was something like, 'Okay, folks, you might have a few fans among Moscow hipsters and two or three percent of the educated middle class in the big cities,'" said
Leonid Volkov
, 2018
campaign manager von Navalny
, when he wanted to run as a presidential candidate, at an online event organized by the Wilson Center.
"But the real mother Russia outside Moscow's periphery doesn't love you, doesn't like you, doesn't know you, doesn't want anything to do with you."
Russia: Navalny tried to expand his sphere of influence
In 2017, Navalny made a conscious attempt
to expand
his
sphere of influence
, held dozens of rallies across the country and set up a
network of regional campaign offices
, Volkov said.
Although he was ultimately banned from the elections as a presidential candidate against Putin, many of these regional offices have grown into local centers that have
supported activists and opposition politicians
and carried out anti-corruption investigations.
Navalny could not run for president himself, but he could use his platform to favor other opposition politicians.
In 2018 he presented a new initiative known as
“Smart Voting”
.
The aim of this
election tactic
is to
unite
the protest and opposition
voters
.
For this purpose, voters are called upon to vote in each race to the candidate who has the best chance against the representative of
Putin's party “United Russia”
.
In the
local elections in Moscow
, the candidates loyal to the Kremlin suffered significant losses, the number of their seats fell from 40 to 25 with a total of 45 possible seats.
Navalny welcomed the results and booked them as a success for the “Smart Voting” concept.
Russia: Opinion poll showed amazing things - Navalny “inspires” an age group more than Putin
But even before the constitutional referendum, the authorities had been targeting Nawalny's
anti-corruption foundation ever more closely
.
In September last year, the security authorities across the country resulted in a criminal anti-corruption investigation against the Foundation in hundreds of homes and offices of activists in over 40 cities
raids
by.
Ultimately, Navalny closed the foundation in July.
He was sued by people against whom he had investigated, including Putin-affiliated companies.
In a survey by the independent Russian polling institute Levada-Zentrum, people were asked which public figure would have inspired them the most.
Eight percent of the participants named Putin,
Navalny came in second with four percent
- and took
first place in the surveyed age group between 40 and 54 years
.
"These numbers are pretty astonishing considering the attitude the official Russian press has taken on [Navalny] over the past decade or more," said
Ekaterina Schulmann
, Associate Fellow of the Russia and Euro-Asia Program at Chatham House she spoke at the Wilson Center.
Navalny case: what price, if any, will Russia pay?
It is not yet possible to say what price Russia will pay for the crackdown on Navalny.
After Skripal was poisoned with Novishok, over 20 countries followed Britain's example and
expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in
what was described by then British
Prime Minister Theresa May
as the largest joint expulsion of suspected Russian intelligence officials in history.
Merkel is faced with increasing calls, including from her own party,
to stop
the construction of the
Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
between Russia and Germany, a long-supported project that is 90 percent complete.
And in September a version of the
Magnitsky Act
(Magnitsky Law) was presented to the Bundestag, which allows sanctions against persons responsible for human rights abuses and corruption in other states.
Should it be passed, Germany could respond to future Russian crimes with other measures.
At the time,
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said Washington was still weighing reactions, noting that there was a "high probability" that the job to poison Navalny came from senior Russian officials.
Only time will tell whether the poison attack on Navalny, unlike so many other Russian crimes, can ultimately lead to a tougher international response.
Amy MacKinnon
This article was first published in English on September 25, 2020 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also available to
Merkur.de
readers
.
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