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A balance has been shattered: How Navalny gives everything to bring Putinism down

2021-03-21T17:34:36.699Z


Alexej Navalny is putting a lot of pressure on Putinism: the opposition leader is forcing the system to make decisions that it does not want to make.


Alexej Navalny is putting a lot of pressure on Putinism: the opposition leader is forcing the system to make decisions that it does not want to make.

  • Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny is in a prison camp - he had previously returned to Russia voluntarily.

  • Navalny's action seems foolhardy, but it had a purpose, believes expert Wladislaw Dawidson: it upset an unstable “equilibrium” in Putin's Russia.

  • Nawalyn had "thrown himself against the system - with the implicit ultimatum that he will not stop until they either arrest or kill him," commented Dawidson, editor-in-chief of the

    Odessa Review

    .

  • This article is available for the first time in German - it was first published on January 22, 2021 by the magazine "Foreign Policy".

Moscow / Washington, DC - Five months after Russian intelligence screwed up an assassination attempt on him, Alexei Navalny boldly returned to Moscow, declaring himself the undisputed champion of Russia's political opposition.

He was the victim of a poison attack of military strength on a flight to Siberia and was then evacuated in a comatose state to Germany, where world-class doctors saved his life and rehabilitated him.

After failing to kill him in a quasi-disputable manner, Russian President Vladimir Putin would have liked nothing more than to have Navalny stayed abroad.

Knowing that if he had stayed in Germany he would have joined the ranks of irrelevant Russian opposition activists in exile, who are routinely ignored by both the authorities and the Russian population, Navalny instead returned to Russia and directed an accelerationist strategy of resistance against the Kremlin - to break the status quo, one way or another.

Navalny and Putin: the Kremlin critic triggers enormous fears in the Russian government - memories of Lenin's return

Navalny and his wife boarded a plane operated by the airline Pobeda - Russian for "victory" - packed with international journalists who were filming every moment.

The return was as stylish as it was sassy.

As the plane accelerated on the runway, Navalny posted a video on his Instagram account in which his wife laconically recited a cult quote from the hugely popular Russian crime film “Brat 2”: “Give us vodka, boy.

We're going home. "

Navalny answered questions from the international press in Russian, publicly refuting Putin's allegation that he was nothing more than a Western agent.

The flight attendants who excitedly took a photo with him were later to have serious problems with the authorities.

The boldness of his political return - to a state that would inevitably try to put him behind bars - with the aim of taking over the leadership of the political opposition, aroused comparisons with Lenin's return via Germany to the Finnish train station over 100 years ago.

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Alexej Navalny flew to Russia again.

© afp / KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV

Immediately before landing, the flight was diverted from one airport to another at the last moment.

Navalny was arrested at passport control on arrival and was not allowed to bring his lawyer with him on the pretext that she had not yet entered the country.

The draconian measures at the airport - entire brigades of riot police surrounded the terminal to keep Nawalny's followers away from him - and the fact that the authorities arrested him before his passport could be stamped, demonstrated the enormous fears he is now causing the authorities .

The next morning he was rushed to trial for failing to serve in an old case in which he received a three and a half year suspended sentence.

Navalny had not appeared in court on a summons - he was in Germany at the time and was recovering from the poison attack.

The hastily organized pseudo-trial in the back room of a provincial police station (which looked more like a troika show trial in the style of the 1930s) showed how desperate or how brazen and brazen the Kremlin is.

Putin under pressure: Navalny "storms the Winter Palace" - opposition is now a global statesman

The Kremlin's haphazard attempt to dispose of a longtime enemy has demonstrated the sad deterioration in the capabilities of once-feared security services.

Navalny not only survived the attack, he also investigated it with the investigation organization Bellingcat and even called and interrogated one of the agents who tried to kill him personally.

His spectacularly theatrical return has transformed Navalny from a political troublemaker who many Russians considered primarily an anti-corruption activist to a global statesman who enjoys the full support of the international community - even if there is little they can do to help him to protect.

The day after his arrest and detention, Navalny and his team of investigators published a full-length research report on Putin's secret personal palace.

The investigation was just as highly theatrical, meticulously staged and perfectly timed as the return to Russia.

The investigation revealed a detailed trace of files - the result of extensive detective work in the depths of the Internet - of which oligarch and which business units are the legal owners of which part of the vast palace grounds and the adjacent vineyards, as well as records of the numerous bribes used to finance one Billion dollars in building fees had flown.

Navalny had symbolically broken into Putin's private sanctuary and now led the Russian people like a tour guide through his secret ballrooms, underground tunnels and tastelessly decorated bedrooms, while mercilessly mocking Putin, his psychological weaknesses and aesthetic preferences.

It was his personal assault on the Winter Palace.

Navalny challenges the “Putin system” - a delicate balance of Kremlin power has been shattered

The hybrid political regime that Putin has built leaves plenty of room for all kinds of ambiguity and venting, both professional and personal.

People are allowed to grumble and complain and pursue their private affairs as long as they don't challenge the system directly.

But Navalny challenged the system directly, forcing it to make a decision on how to deal with it that it actually doesn't want to make.

Crossing the line and targeting Putin's personal wealth has never been so shamelessly done by a Russian dissident, and previous investigations by Navalny into Putin's entourage had avoided such direct attacks on the president and his family.

There is no way back.

Nobody has challenged the Russian hybrid regime as directly as Navalny.

He has thrown himself against the system - with the implicit ultimatum that he will not stop until they either arrest him or kill him.

Or maybe arrest and then kill.

The previous consensus enacted by the regime;

the delicate balance that created a system that could operate under the radar and that people preferred to censor themselves - and which used brutal violence sparingly and at random - was shattered the moment Navalny boarded the plane in Berlin.

The historical dissident who most resembles Navalny is Alexander Solzhenitsyn: just as energetic, headstrong, fearless, physically and morally brave, and with a focus that borders on obsession.

Similar to Solzhenitsyn, Navalny wants to break through the regime he is fighting with sheer strength of will and personality, and threats with a few more years in a camp do not dissuade him from doing so.

And, like Solzhenitsyn, Navalny represents some harsh nationalist and conservative values ​​that are causing embarrassment to liberals in both Russia and the West, and which have re-emerged in recent talks about him as the Kremlin fiercely seeks ways to discredit him.

Putin / Russia: Navalny has given himself hostage into the hands of the system

With his return, faced with threats from the government that he would be jailed, and the unpredictability of the possible response, Navalny has effectively placed himself hostage in the hands of the system.

He has already irrevocably reshaped the terms of his struggle with Putinism.

In response to Navalny's arrest, the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution calling on the European Union to stop work on Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

The system quickly struck back: shortly thereafter, the apartment of Nawalny's press officer was searched by the police;

several of his high profile supporters were arrested in advance of the planned nationwide protests.

Navalny risked his own life on a remarkable bet and an accelerating push against the system.

The national participation in the demonstrations shows whether this bet will work.

by Wladislaw Davidson

Wladislaw Davidson

is a writer, journalist and artist who has reported extensively from Ukraine.

He is the editor-in-chief of the

Odessa Review

.

This article was first published in English on January 22nd, 2021 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also

 available to

Merkur.de

readers 

.

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© ForeignPolicy.com

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-03-21

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