For several weeks now, the eyes of the world have been on the Russian border with Ukraine;
However, it is not at all clear if it will happen - there are good reasons to assume it is a show intended for domestic purposes - but in the meantime, there is a line between the brushing of Russian swords and an event that took place exactly a year ago at Moscow's Shermityev airport:
Reminder: Nabalani, the most famous corrupt revelator in Russia, survived an assassination attempt in August 2020. When he was on a domestic flight in the country, he collapsed, collapsed and died. Thanks to an emergency landing and an atropine injection he survived, and after two days and thanks to international pressure on Putin was flown unconscious for life-saving treatment in Berlin. In Germany it was determined beyond any doubt: the opposition was poisoned with a Novichuk chemical weapon. After coming out of his coma and recovering, he stunned the world with an investigation, in which he, along with his team and journalists from around the world, exposed the PSB squad (Russian GSS), which followed him and smeared the poison on his underwear. But this big surprise perhaps even more was just on the way: in January 2021 Navalny announced that he intended to return to Russia.
Why did he decide to return to the country his government was trying to eliminate? In a post he published he explained that he misses his country and is not willing to give it up. But in talks with his associates he said that if he stayed abroad, he would slowly become another Russian oppositionist who criticized the Kremlin from a distance. Navalny wanted a real change in his homeland, so he decided to go all out and come back.
The minimum price he would pay is a loss of liberty (as indeed happened immediately upon his landing). The maximum - loss of life, although death threatened him less after knowing him closely. Perhaps he also realized that the Kremlin would actually have to keep him alive, and in fact, in his imprisonment - the Kremlin would also imprison himself a bit: the death of the Russian "Nelson Mandela" could have returned to Moscow like a boomerang. The gamble worked well: Navalny was arrested as soon as he set foot on Russian soil and sentenced to prison, but beyond preventing medical treatment for several weeks, being in jail and the posts he publishes (through his staff) allow him to maintain a presence in the public consciousness. The international awards (including the Sakharov Prize of the European Union) he receives also present him and his struggles.
And what does these have to do with brushing the swords and the spirits of war? Because the Kremlin's response to Nabalani's return and demonstrations against his arrest was to create a sense of external and internal threat to stability, and developed into a crusade against anyone and everything that might challenge the regime. At the internal level, the Kremlin cracked down on the elimination of civil society - in the name of thwarting the "danger posed by the West." Nabalani-affiliated organizations were outlawed (and he himself was portrayed as a CIA agent); His accomplices were exiled for fear of criminal prosecution; Independent media outlets have been shut down or forced to operate under severe restrictions; And like them, organizations that deal with anything that goes beyond the "official" perception of reality have become unwanted - whether it is organizations fighting domestic violence, or an organization that exposed the crimes of Stalinism and recently closed because it "produces a false image of the USSR as a state of terror."
It was almost requested that the increasing militancy inwardly also be given external expression - after all, the painting "The Western Threat" needs "proof".
For this reason (among other things), Russia in early 2021 concentrated forces on the Ukrainian border, and a few months ago repeated the move, this time demanding "Western guarantees for its security" (there was some kind of threat).
Meanwhile, the policy of extortion by threats does not work, because in the West there is an understanding of who they are dealing with: a nuclear-armed kleptocracy, whose corruption is the blood flowing in its arteries and the creation of conflicts is its approach to the world.
Navalny was among the first to shout this - and every day he pays a personal price for his daring.
Were we wrong?
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