Tag: Alexei Navalny

Navalny widow joins protest against Putin in Berlin on final day of voting

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Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, took part in a noon protest against President Vladimir Putin on Sunday in Berlin on the final day of the country’s elections. Thousands of people also turned up at polling stations across Russia to take part in what the anti-Kremlin opposition said was a peaceful but symbolic political protest against Putin’s re-election. 

Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh posted pictures on X of Navalnaya standing in line in Berlin where Russians queued up to vote. Activists said that some people chanted “Yulia, Yulia”, and clapped.

Queues of people were also seen forming outside polling stations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg at noon, when Russia‘s opposition called for people to collectively spoil their ballots or vote against Putin.

Others had vowed to scrawl the name of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last month in an Arctic prison, on their ballot paper.

More than 74 people have been detained in thirteen Russian cities in connection to the presidential election taking place, the OVD-Info protest-monitoring group said.

The three-day vote had already been marred by a surge in fatal Ukrainian bombardment, incursions into Russian territory by pro-Kyiv sabotage groups and vandalism at polling stations.

Ukrainian drones attacked at least eight Russian regions overnight and on Sunday morning, with some reaching as far as the Moscow region, the defence ministry said.

Three airports serving the capital briefly suspended operations following the barrage, while a drone attack in the south sparked a fire at an oil refinery.

In the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where voting is also taking place, “kamikaze drones” set a polling station ablaze, according to Moscow-installed authorities.

The defence ministry said it had “intercepted and destroyed 35 unmanned aerial vehicles” across the country.

The turnout at Russia’s presidential election hit 67.54% on Sunday, surpassing 2018 levels several hours before the end of polling, according to the TASS news agency. The 2018 turnout was 67.5%.

Last ‘legal’ protest

There were repeated acts of protest in the first days of polling, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes or arson attacks.

Read more‘Noon against Putin’: Navalny’s last wish and an act of Russian opposition

Before his death in an Arctic prison last month, opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged Russians to collectively vote at noon in a protest the opposition dubbed “Midday Against Putin”.

AFP reporters saw an increase in people queuing outside polling stations at midday (09:00 GMT) in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

“This is the last kind of protest action through which you can legally express yourself. It’s safe,” 29-year-old IT worker Alexander told AFP.

He voted around noon at a polling station in Maryino, a district of Moscow where Navalny used to cast his ballot.

“If I didn’t do it, I’d feel like a coward,” he said.

Elena, 52, who also voted around noon, doubted the demonstration would have much of an impact. 

“Honestly, I don’t think it will show anything,” she told AFP.

Any public dissent in Russia has been harshly punished since the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and there have been repeated warnings from the authorities against election protests.

‘Difficult period’

The 71-year-old Putin, a former KGB agent, has been in power since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over the country until at least 2030.

If he completes another Kremlin term, he will have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

He is running without any real opponents, having barred two candidates who opposed the conflict in Ukraine.

Read moreRussia’s presidential election: Three Putin challengers but little suspense

The Kremlin has cast the election as an opportunity for Russians to show they are behind the assault on Ukraine, where voting is also being staged in Russian-held areas.

In a pre-election address on Thursday, Putin said Russia was going through a “difficult period”.

“We need to continue to be united and self-confident,” he said, describing the election as a way for Russians to demonstrate their “patriotic feelings”.

The voting will wrap up in Kaliningrad, Russia’s western-most time zone, at 18:00 GMT and an exit poll is expected to be announced shortly after that.

A concert on Red Square is being staged on Monday to mark 10 years since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula – an event that is also expected to serve as a victory celebration for Putin.

‘No validity’

Ukraine has repeatedly denounced the elections as illegitimate and a “farce”, and urged Western allies not to recognise the result.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as well as more than 50 member states, have slammed Moscow for holding the vote in parts of Ukraine.

Guterres said the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.

Ahead of the election, Russian state media have played up recent gains on the front and portrayed the conflict as a fight for survival against attacks from the West.

Moscow has also sought to press its advantage on the front line as divisions over Western military support for Ukraine have led to ammunition shortages, although Kyiv says it has managed to stop the Russian advance for now. 

In Ukraine, a Russian missile strike on the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday killed 21 people including rescue workers responding to an initial hit – an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “vile”.

In Russia’s border city of Belgorod, Ukrainian shelling killed a 16-year-old girl and wounded her father, the region’s governor said Sunday.

The governor has ordered the closure of shopping centres and schools in Belgorod and the surrounding area for two days because of the strikes.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

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Russia’s presidential election: Three Putin challengers but little suspense

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President Vladimir Putin faces just three rivals in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election after anti-war candidates were barred from running. But Leonid Slutsky, Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov do not pose much of a challenge for the Russian leader, who is all but guaranteed to secure another six-year term. 

The first polls in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election opened in the country’s easternmost Kamchatka Peninsula region at 8am local time Friday, with the vast voting exercise spanning 11 time zones set to finish in the westernmost Kaliningrad enclave at 8pm on Sunday.

The election holds little suspense. Incumbent Vladimir Putin – who has been in power either as president or prime minister for nearly a quarter-century – is set to secure another six-year term. 

But a longtime autocrat requires a veneer of legitimacy, even in Russia. Voters will thus have a choice between the almost guaranteed victor and three pre-approved candidates.   

Ultranationalist Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladislav Davankov of the relatively liberal New People’s Party and veteran candidate Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party are the supporting characters in 2024’s electoral choreography. In a possible sign of Russia’s shrinking tolerance for political challenges, that’s four fewer candidates than qualified for the 2018 presidential election. 

Competition and criticism was severely curtailed in the lead-up to the 2024 vote, with authorities blocking a number of opposition hopefuls and critics using a variety of means, including labelling them as “foreign agents”.   

“Between the ‘foreign agent’ labels, the fines, imprisonments and the incredible hardening of the regime, the number of candidates is limited. However, they represent real political forces. The nationalist right carries political weight in Russia, as do the Communists, whose score could be in the region of 10 percent,” noted Jean de Gliniasty, former French ambassador to Russia and current senior research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS).

Read more‘Noon against Putin’: Navalny widow realises his last wish for the Russian opposition

‘I don’t dream of beating Putin’

But while some of the candidates represent established political parties, they do not pose much of a challenge to Putin, nor have they put up much of a fight on the campaign trail.

Shortly after registering his candidacy in December 2023, Slutsky – the candidate from the ultranationalist LDPR founded by the late right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – appeared certain of defeat.

“I don’t dream of beating Putin. What’s the point?” Slutsky told reporters. The 56-year-old Russian politician who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian lower house, the State Duma, then predicted “a huge victory” for Putin.

At 75, Kharitonov is the oldest candidate on the ballot. A veteran Communist Party politician who has been a State Duma deputy since 1993, Kharitonov ran for president in 2004, coming in second to Putin with 13.7 percent of the vote.

This time, Kharitonov ran a low-key campaign, focused on Soviet-era issues, including criticising capitalism, promoting industrial nationalisation and an increase in the Russian birth rate.

Davankov, 39, is the youngest of the opposition candidates. The former businessman-turned-politician promotes greater freedom for businesses and a stronger role for regional authorities. 

The deputy chairman of the State Duma, where his party holds 15 of the 450 seats, Davankov has tried to position himself as a candidate opposed to the Kremlin’s excessive curbs on personal freedoms. He favours peace talks with Ukraine, following the Kremlin’s official line, while reiterating that it should be “on our terms and with no rollback”, meaning Russia should not cede territory it has occupied.

Read moreFive things to know about Russia’s upcoming presidential election

“Each candidate presents juxtaposed ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively these contribute to Putin’s goal of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” noted Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in a column, “Putin’s Grand Plan for Russia’s 2024 Elections“.

According to Putin’s critics, these three quasi-opponents, integrated into the Russian political system, perform an important function: to channel the discontent of various strata of society and provide a pluralist veneer for the vote, while the real opposition has been wiped out by years of repression.

“Throughout history, Russian power has always been extremely careful to respect formal rules. Even a very authoritarian regime faces public opinion and cares about it. This election remains a test of Putin’s legitimacy and popularity. Even if this test appears to be a formality, it has value for those in power,” explained de Gliniasty.

No political space for anti-war candidates

But not all positions on the political spectrum are represented on the ballot this year. In the lead-up to the presidential election, criticism of the Ukraine invasion was effectively suppressed with the arrests of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters. Hefty fines were also slapped on anyone voicing opposition to the war, according to international rights groups.

Two independent presidential hopeful running on anti-war platforms, Yekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin, were barred from running by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).

While the CEC barred Duntsova in December, Nadezhdin’s candidacy attracted attention, with thousands lining up in cities across Russia in January to give their signatures supporting the anti-war candidate.

That did not work in Nadezhdin’s favour.

“The question obviously arose of leaving out a voice that could have played a symbolic role and brought in, dare I say it, left-leaning, liberal voters. Boris Nadezhdin could have stood for election if he had achieved a modest score, but faced with the enthusiasm generated by his candidacy, the Kremlin preferred to send him packing,” explained de Gliniasty.

A ‘noon vote’ campaign for Navalny supporters

Despite the sweeping crackdowns, some of Putin’s opponents have vowed to express their opposition at the polls. On March 5, Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya called the election a “masquerade” and urged Russians to cast protest votes.

“You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You can spoil your ballot paper, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters,” she urged.

In an action called “Noon against Putin”, Navalny supporters plan to go to their local polling station on Sunday exactly at midday, stand in line for a voting slip, and then vote in a way that expresses their protest.

Such social mobilisation comes with serious risks. Some Navalny supporters received letters last week warning them that prosecutors had reason to believe they will be participating in an illegal event that “bore signs of extremist activity”, an accusation Russia often levies at enemies of the Kremlin. 

The ‘non-war’ across the border

Although the outcome of the vote is certain, the authorities have gone through great lengths to encourage Russians to go to the polls, dialing up the patriotism and presenting the vote as an essential step towards “victory” in Ukraine.

Over the past few weeks, Putin did several media appearances with the heroes of the “special military operation”, as the Ukraine war is still called in Russia.

But the campaign did not feature any debate on the conflict in Russia’s neighbouring state.

“One might have expected the subject of war to be central to the election campaign,” said Anna Colin-Lebedev, a specialist in post-Soviet societies at Paris-Nanterre University. “However, the debates – which did not excite the Russian public – were mainly devoted to other subjects such as education, culture, the economy, agriculture, demographics [and] housing” in what she called a “framed”, pre-approved narrative.

More than two years after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is attempting a tricky balancing act on the subject, according to experts.

“The authorities are caught in a contradiction,” noted de Gliniasty. “They want to talk as little as possible about the war in Ukraine, as if to say that everything is fine, that everything is normal and that it’s just a special operation. But at the same time, it wants this election to serve to legitimise the invasion.” 

Read more‘I know Putin can eliminate me’: Russian opponent speaks out as election gets underway

The turnout barometer

Given the stakes, the authorities are deeply invested in keeping up appearances by holding elections under the guise of a functioning democracy.

“These elections are very important for the Kremlin,” Nikolai Petrov of London-based Chatham House told the AFP. “It is needed to demonstrate that Russians overwhelmingly support Putin” during the military offensive.

Turnout then becomes a critical issue, as it does in most authoritarian countries holding questionable elections.

Some managers at state companies have ordered employees to vote – even asking them to submit photographs of their ballot papers, reported Reuters, quoting six sources who did not want to be named. Cash machines also remind Russians to vote. And in Russian-occupied Ukraine, residents have complained of pro-Russian collaborators with ballot boxes going from house to house looking for voters accompanied by armed soldiers. 

Then there’s the question of vote-rigging.

“Parliamentary elections may be rigged in Russia, but presidential elections are not,” de Gliniasty said. “There are cameras and observers in polling stations. There’s no need for rigging because everything has been cleaned up beforehand so the result will be perfectly acceptable.” 

But given the context of the Ukraine war and the hardening stance of the Russian regime, “we cannot predict what will happen in these elections”, admitted the former French ambassador.

Putin won nearly 77 percent of the vote in 2018, 14 points more than in 2012. At the country’s helm for almost a quarter-century, the indisputable master of the Kremlin has yet to name a successor. Putin signed into law a constitutional amendment in 2021 that altered term limits and will allow him to remain in power until 2036.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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‘Noon against Putin’: A small gesture and a powerful symbol of Russia’s opposition

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The widow of Russia’s late opposition leader Alexei Navalny is calling on voters in the country’s presidential election to turn up at polling stations en masse at 12 noon on March 17 and either vote against Vladimir Putin or spoil their ballot. The protest action, known as “Noon Against Putin”, aims to honour Navalny’s last wishes, while illustrating the high number of voters who are against Russia’s war on Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin is hoping for record turnout in the country’s forthcoming March 15-17 elections. And now the Russian strongman, who is seeking a fifth term in office in a tightly controlled vote, might find his wish has been granted.

But if voters turn out in high numbers on March 17 at noon sharp, Putin might feel he should have been careful what he wished for.

The “Noon against Putin” protest action was called for by the late Alexei Navalny two weeks before his death in an Arctic prison, and is now being continued by his widow Yulia.

Promoters of the protest want Russians to wait until noon on March 17 to go to their polling station. They don’t care which candidate they vote for – as long as it’s not Putin and as long as they come precisely at noon.

“The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin,” Navalnaya said in a YouTube video.

“You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station, and then turn around and go home.”

Russia’s presidential election is widely expected to hand Putin another six-year term, keeping him in the Kremlin until at least 2030. The vote is being held with no meaningful opposition challengers and international observers have already raised concerns about its transparency and accountability.

Navalnaya views the polling protest as a gesture of support for the Russian opposition and a powerful way for citizens to show they are against Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Indeed the protest action may be the only thing motivating Russians who are against Putin to turn out and vote.

“How many people will show up is the only interesting figure in these elections,” says Matthew Wyman, a specialist in Russian politics at Keele University in the UK.

‘Navalny’s political legacy’

“We have to sabotage it [the election],” says Maxim Reznik, an exiled Russian opposition figure who came up with the idea for the initiative, when interviewed by independent Russian news website Meduza.

Reznik first suggested the protest action during a debate – “What to do about the presidential election?” – broadcast in January 2024 on the opposition channel Dozhd.

Since then, most of Russia’s leading opposition figures have voiced their support for the “Noon Against Putin” initiative, starting with Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, which rarely misses an opportunity to promote it.

Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper, has even called the protest action “Navalny’s will”.

“It’s very appropriate to link it to Navalny because it’s the kind of thing he would have done,” Wyman points out.

“It is in the spirit of a lot of things Navalny was doing and asking people to do: it’s not difficult, and with small steps you can hope to make big changes,” adds Jenny Mathers, a specialist in Russia at Aberystwyth University in Wales.

“Noon against Putin” ties in perfectly with this strategy. Going to the polling station at a specific time calls for no particular effort from voters – neither does it put them at risk.

“What they are doing is trying to find ways to show resistance without risk of being put in jail. The protest is brilliant because they are doing exactly what the regime wants you to do: going to vote,” says Wyman, adding that the police would find it hard to justify arresting voters for doing their civic duty.

Mathers suggests it is important to start with small steps.

“The idea is to rebuild civil society and a credible opposition force that has been badly hit lately,” she notes. “After small steps, maybe a bigger one will come? I see it as one piece of a long-lasting campaign,” Mathers adds.

The number of Russians opposed to the war

This type of protest action illustrates “the creativity of actions undertaken by the opposition in Russia”, explains Wyman, adding that “the space to protest has been kind of reduced and reduced”.

“Noon against Putin” is just one of a long list of initiatives in a similar vein. Demonstrators have held up blank sheets of paper to symbolise the censorship of any criticism of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and activists have added QR codes to advertising billboards so that citizens can access websites critical of Putin.

“These are the kind of practices you see in regimes that become more and more oppressive,” says Mathers.

“It is like what China does, when they use Winnie the Pooh,” adds Mathers, referring to China’s ban of a Winnie the Pooh film after the Chinese used memes to mock their leader Xi Pingping by comparing him to the honey-loving bear.

Some wonder if the protest action will have any real impact.

“Obviously it’s not going to change the outcome of the election,” admits Mathers.

However, Wyman believes it will give a “better picture” of the strength of the opposition to the war on Ukraine.

The vast crowds that gathered for Navalny’s funeral on March 1 have already given some insight into the feeling of dissent in Russia. At least 27,000 people came to say farewell to Navalny at Borisovsky cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow, according to a count by the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona.

But Stephen Hall, a Russia specialist at the University of Bath, predicts that voter turnout will be much higher than it was for Navalny’s funeral – pointing out that it was mainly Muscovites who attended, and that police had warned people to stay away.

“Here the risk of arrest is low and it’s [taking place] all over Russia.

“This is a low risk way to show you’re against the regime and the war.”

Stealing the media limelight from Putin

Hall believes one of “Noon Against Putin’s” main challenges will be mobilising people outside of Moscow or St Petersburg.

“Putin has always counted on popular support on the outskirts of major urban centres. If long queues form in front of polling stations all over Russia at midday on Sunday, he may start to worry about the real level of his popularity,” he explains.

“Noon against Putin” also aims to steal the media spotlight from the Kremlin.

“The regime wants this election to be non-controversial. So the more disruption there is, like huge numbers going to polling stations at noon, the more this might be a problem for Putin,” says Mathers.

“Putin desperately wants all the world headlines after the election to say he ‘got 85 percent’,” says Reznik.

“But now, rest assured, you’ll see! All the headlines won’t be about Putin’s performance but about what happened at ‘Noon’,” Reznik adds.

“It’s about creating a counter-narrative,” agrees Matthew Wyman.

This is partly so that Russians opposed to the regime do not feel alone, but it’s also “a way to say to the world we are not all Putin, and that there is a movement to support in Russia”, adds Mathers.

But for that to happen, voters will need to turn out in high numbers at polling stations at noon on Sunday.

This article has been translated from the original in French. 

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Five things to know about Russia’s upcoming presidential election

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking a fifth term as Russians vote from Friday to Sunday in an election that has already raised transparency and accountability concerns. After two anti-war candidates were disqualified, the remaining three have all supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Russia is holding a presidential election that is set to hand President Vladimir Putin another six-year mandate despite the upheaval triggered by Moscow’s war in Ukraine. 

After a 2021 constitutional reform altered Russian term limits, Putin could remain in power until 2036. He was first elected president in 2000. 

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has said its election observers were not invited to monitor the 2024 vote to ensure an “impartial and independent assessment” of the electoral process. 

Here are five things to know about the Russian election:

No anti-war opposition

The only would-be candidates opposed to the campaign in Ukraine, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, who gathered tens of thousands of signatures to support their candidacies, had their applications turned down.

Read moreRussians queue to register election candidate opposed to Ukraine offensive

Other than Putin, there are three registered candidates – the nationalist conservative Leonid Slutsky, the Communist Party candidate Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov, a businessman.

They have all supported Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Kremlin critics point out that the role of these three candidates is to channel any discontent and give a pluralist varnish to the vote at a time when the opposition has been greatly diminished by repression.

Read moreDeath of Alexei Navalny decimates the Russian opposition

Independent observers also say the authorities have means at their disposal to manage the results, including vote-rigging, ballot-stuffing and using millions of state employees to back the status quo.

The only unknown factor is whether there could be any protests, as called for by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and now his widow, Yulia Navalnaya.

Thousands of supporters turned out to pay their respects at Navalny’s funeral in Moscow last month, some chanting anti-government slogans.

His widow has called the elections “a complete fiction and a fake”, and earlier this month urged supporters to show up at the polling stations on Sunday to protest.

“What to do next? The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin,” she said in a YouTube video. “You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station, and then turn around and go home.”


Putin’s promises

While the result of the election is not in doubt, the government is campaigning hard, in a bid to strengthen Putin’s domestic and international legitimacy.

The Kremlin chief is in a better position now because of Russian advances in Ukraine amid cracks in Western support for Kyiv, and the Russian economy proving resilient despite heavy sanctions.

Putin has stepped up media appearances in recent weeks, meeting students, visiting factories and even taking a flight in a nuclear bomber.

But the efforts have not come without a cost. According to internal Kremlin documents recently obtained by the Estonian news website Delfi, the government has spent some €1 billion on propaganda ahead of the elections.

Read more‘Kremlin Leaks’: Files detail Putin’s €1 billion propaganda effort ahead of presidential vote

However, the Russian president has never taken part in an election debate since coming to power nearly a quarter of a century ago and will not start now.

In his State of the Nation speech last month, he made a long series of budget promises, handing out billions of rubles to modernise schools and infrastructure, fight poverty, protect the environment and boost technology.

The speech laid out a programme of government until at least 2030.

Economic concerns

Even though the economy has held up far better than expected, many Russians are worried about rising prices – particularly for food – and, in general, the instability generated by the war in Ukraine.

Labour shortages have piled up since thousands of young men have either died or are fighting in Ukraine, while hundreds of thousands of other people have fled abroad because they oppose the conflict or to avoid military service.

The authorities have clamped down hard in recent months on demonstrations by the wives of conscripted soldiers who have been asking for their loved ones to be allowed to return from the front.

Calls to vote

Patriotic posters have been plastered around the country, calling on Russians to vote.

The election posters have a “V” sign akin to the one used by Russian troops in Ukraine and the slogan: “Together, we are strong. Let’s vote for Russia!”

The authorities will also organise raffles and entertainment to encourage voters to come out and vote in a country where disenchantment with politics, particularly among young people, is high.

Neighbouring Ukraine and its Western allies are presented as troublemakers in state media and official speeches.

Putin warned in December about possible “foreign interference” in the vote and promised a “severe response”.

Last week, Russia summoned the US ambassador Lynne Tracy, accusing US-funded NGOs of “spreading disinformation” about the election.

According to the Moscow Times, Russia warned of retaliatory measures that could include expelling “US embassy officials involved in such actions”.

Voting in Russia-held Ukraine

In a sign of Russian authorities trying to project normality amid an ongoing conflict, there will be voting in Russian-held areas of Ukraine.

Russia in 2022 declared the unilateral annexation of four regions of Ukraine – even though its troops still do not control them fully.

Kyiv says local inhabitants are now being subjected to threats and violence to force them to vote –something which Moscow denies.

Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine have been able to cast their ballots early.

 


Three women sit on a bench near a mobile polling station during early voting in Russia’s presidential election, in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on March 10, 2024. Kyiv has warned that residents in Russian-annexed areas have been threatened against not voting. © Alexander Ermochenko, Reuters

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters)

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Ahead of election, President Vladimir Putin’s programmes occupy most of TV shows in Russia

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Thousands of Russians braved the cold for hours earlier this month to honour the Opposition politician Alexei Navalny after his funeral. They chanted anti-war slogans and covered his gravesite with so many flowers that it disappeared from view.

It was one of the largest displays of defiance against President Vladimir Putin since he invaded Ukraine, and happened just weeks before an election he is all but assured to win. But Russians watching television saw none of it.

A leading state television channel opened with its host railing against the West and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO.) Another channel led with a segment extolling the virtues of domestically built streetcars. And there was the usual deferential coverage of Mr. Putin.

Since coming to power almost 25 years ago, Mr. Putin has eliminated nearly all independent media and the Opposition voices in Russia — a process he ramped up after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s control over media is now absolute.

State television channels cheer every battlefield victory, twist the pain of economic sanctions into positive stories, and ignore that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine.

Some Russians seek news from abroad or on social media using tools to circumvent state restrictions. But most still rely on state television, which floods them with the Kremlin’s view of the world. Over time, the effect is to whittle away their desire to question it.

“Propaganda is a kind of drug and I don’t mind taking it,” said Victoria, 50, from Russian-occupied Crimea. She refused to give her last name because of concerns about her safety.

“If I get up in the morning and hear that things are going badly in our country, how will I feel? How will millions of people feel? … Propaganda is needed to sustain people’s spirit,” she said.

Vladimir Putin’s broken promises

When Mr. Putin first addressed Russians as their new President on the last day of 1999, he promised a bright path after the chaotic years that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“The state will stand firm to protect freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of mass media,” he said.

Yet just over a year later, he broke that promise: The Kremlin neutered its main media critic, the independent TV channel NTV, and went after the media tycoons who controlled it.

In the following decades, multiple Russian journalists, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, were killed or jailed, and the Russian parliament passed laws curbing press freedoms. The crackdown intensified two years ago after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

New laws made it a crime to discredit the Russian military and anyone spreading “false information” about the war faced up to 15 years in prison. Almost overnight, nearly all independent media outlets suspended operations or left the country. The Kremlin blocked access to independent media and some social media sites, and Russian courts jailed two journalists with U.S. citizenship, Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva.

“The Putin regime is based on propaganda and fear. And propaganda plays the most important role because people live in an information bubble,” said Marina Ovsyannikova, a former state television journalist who quit her job at a leading Russian state television channel in an on-air protest against the war.

The Kremlin regularly meets with the heads of TV stations to give “special instructions on what can be said on air,” said Ms. Ovsyannikova.

Every day, TV stations serve up a mix of bluster, threats and half-truths — telling viewers the West wants to destroy their country, that sanctions make them stronger and that Russia is winning the war.

The Kremlin’s goal is to squeeze out any Opposition so that citizens “remain inert and compliant,” said Sam Greene, a director at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.

The strength of the Kremlin’s grip on the media means that while Navalny’s death in an Arctic penal colony was major news in the West, many Russians didn’t know about it.

One out of five Russians said they had not heard about his death, according to the independent Russian pollster Levada Center. Half said they only had vague knowledge of it.

The most memorable event for Russians in February, the polling found, was the Russian military’s capture of the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka.

By trumpeting military victories, the Kremlin is focussed on creating a “happy feeling,” ahead of the elections, said Jade McGlynn, an expert on Russian propaganda at King’s College London.

Anti-war candidates are banned from the ballot, and there is no significant challenger to Mr. Putin. State television broadcasts dull debates between representatives of Mr. Putin’s opponents.

President Putin is not openly campaigning but is frequently shown touring the country — admiring remote tomato farms or visiting weapons factories.

The idea that Russia is thriving under Mr. Putin is a potent message for people who have seen their living standards fall since the war — and sanctions — began, driving up prices for food and other staples.

The war has also pushed Russia’s defence industry into overdrive, and people like Victoria from Crimea have noticed.

“If they tell me that new jobs have appeared, should I be happy or sad? Is this propaganda or truth?” she asked.

“Granules of truth”

Russian propaganda is “sophisticated and multi-faceted,” said Francis Scarr, a journalist who analyses Russian television for BBC Monitoring.

There is some “outright lying,” he said, but often Russian state media “takes a granule of truth and massively over-amplifies it.” For example, while unemployment in Russia is at a record low, news reports don’t explain it’s partly because tens of thousands of Russians have been sent to fight in Ukraine or have fled the country.

Many Russians know this, yet the idea that Russia is prospering – even if it contradicts what they see with their own eyes – is still attractive.

“The greatness of Russia tends to be measured throughout history in the greatness of the state and not in the greatness of the quality of life for its people,” said McGlynn of King’s College London.

Ahead of the election, state TV is ramping up that nationalistic theme, telling viewers it is their patriotic duty to vote. The Kremlin, experts say, is worried Russians may not come out in large numbers.

Videos released on social media – but not directly linked to the Kremlin – are aimed at combating apathy, especially among younger voters.

In one, a woman berates her husband for not voting. “What difference does it make? Will he not get elected without us,” the husband asks, indirectly referring to Mr. Putin. To which his wife warns him: inaction could leave their child without maternity payments.

The Kremlin wants high voter turnout, experts say, to lend an aura of legitimacy to Mr. Putin, whose re-election would keep him in power through at least 2030.

“No Opposition in modern Russia”

People can bypass government restrictions by using special links to foreign websites or accessing the Internet over private networks.

But it’s questionable whether many Russians — especially those living in Mr. Putin’s conservative heartland — even want to hear news conveyed in the language of the liberal West.

To “break through to the people who are not putting flowers on Navalny’s grave, they’re going to have to meet those viewers where they are and speak to them in a language that they understand,” said Greene. That means striking a balance between criticism of Mr. Putin’s regime and pride in the nation.

Even those soothed by the Kremlin’s propaganda also could long for a real choice at the polls.

“I don’t see any Opposition in modern Russia,” said Victoria, pointing out that the candidates running alongside Mr. Putin all have the Kremlin’s approval. “I don’t plan to vote in the elections,” she added.

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Alexei Navalny, who galvanised opposition to Putin, is laid to rest after his death in prison

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Workers carry the coffin and a portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny out of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. Relatives and supporters of Alexei Navalny are bidding farewell to the opposition leader at a funeral in southeastern Moscow, following a battle with authorities over the release of his body after his still-unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony.
| Photo Credit: AP

Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bade farewell on Friday to Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.

The service followed a battle with authorities over the release of the body of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic. His supporters said several churches in Moscow refused to hold the funeral for the man who crusaded against official corruption and organised big protests. Many Western leaders blamed the death on the Russian leader, an accusation the Kremlin angrily rejected.

Mr. Navalny’s team eventually got permission from the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, which was encircled by crowd-control barriers on Friday.

As his coffin was removed from the hearse and taken inside the church, the crowd waiting outside broke into respectful applause and then chanted: “Navalny! Navalny!” Some also shouted, “You weren’t afraid, neither are we!” and later “No to war!”

Western diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Lynn Tracy, were among those who attended, along with presidential hopefuls Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova. Both wanted to run against Mr. Putin in the upcoming presidential elections and opposed his war in Ukraine; neither was allowed on the ballot.

A photo from inside the church showed an open casket with Mr. Navalny’s body covered with red and white flowers, and his mother sitting beside it holding a candle.

Mr. Navalny’s father was also present, but it was not clear who else in his family attended. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, just two days ago addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg in France; his daughter is a student at the Stanford University, and the whereabouts of his son are unknown.

The politician’s closest associates have left Russia under pressure and watched the funeral, which was streamed live on his YouTube channel, from abroad.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those gathering in Moscow and other places not to break the law, saying any “unauthorised (mass) gatherings” are violations.

“Those people who follow what is happening, it is of course obvious to them that this man is a hero of our country, whom we will not forget,” said Nadezhda Ivanova, a Kaliningrad resident who was outside the church with other supporters. “What was done to him is incredibly difficult to accept and get through it.”

After the short funeral, a crowd of thousands marched from the church to the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery, where the police were also out in force for the burial.

Police, right, observe as people walk towards the Borisovskoye Cemetery for the funeral ceremony of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bade farewell Friday to Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.

Police, right, observe as people walk towards the Borisovskoye Cemetery for the funeral ceremony of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bade farewell Friday to Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.
| Photo Credit:
AP

With the casket open, Mr. Navalny’s parents and others stroked and kissed his body. Meanwhile, a large crowd of supporters gathered at the gates of the cemetery, chanting: “Let us in to say say goodbye!”

The coffin was then lowered into the ground, allies said.

Mr. Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent eight days trying to get authorities to release the body following his February 16 death at Penal Colony No. 3 in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 km northeast of Moscow.

Even on Friday itself, the morgue where the body was being held delayed its release, according to Ivan Zhdanov, Mr. Navalny’s close ally and director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Authorities originally said they could not turn over the body because they needed to conduct post-mortem tests. Ms. Navalnaya made a video appeal to Mr. Putin to release it so she could bury her son with dignity.

At least one funeral director said he had been “forbidden” to work with Navalny’s supporters, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on social media. They also struggled to find a hearse.

“Unknown people are calling up people and threatening them not to take Mr. Alexei’s body anywhere,” Ms. Yarmysh said Thursday.

Russian authorities still have not announced the cause of death for Mr. Navalny, who was 47.

Mr. Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

His Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were designated as “extremist organisations” by the Russian government that same year.

His widow accused Mr. Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of trying to block a public funeral.

“We don’t want any special treatment — just to give people the opportunity to say farewell to Alexei in a normal way,” Yulia Navalnaya wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a speech to European lawmakers on Wednesday, she also expressed fears that police might interfere with the gathering or would “arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband.”

Moscow authorities refused permission for a separate memorial event for Mr. Navalny and slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Friday, citing COVID-19 restrictions, according to politician Yekaterina Duntsova said. Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy Prime Minister, was shot to death as he walked on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin on the night of February 27, 2015.

Ms. Yarmysh also urged Navalny’s supporters around the world to lay flowers in his honor on Friday.

“Everyone who knew Alexei says what a cheerful, courageous and honest person he was,” Ms. Yarmysh said Thursday. “But the greater truth is that even if you never met Alexei, you knew what he was like, too. You shared his investigations, you went to rallies with him, you read his posts from prison. His example showed many people what to do when even when things were scary and difficult.”

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Who are other Russian dissidents besides the late Alexei Navalny?

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The sudden death of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable antagonist has left an open wound in Russia’s political opposition.

Alexei Navalny, 47, was the Kremlin’s best-known critic at home and abroad. Before he died in a penal colony Friday, the anti-corruption crusader, protest organiser and politician with an arch sense of humour became the subject of an award-winning documentary. His channels on YouTube had millions of subscribers.

Navalny also was the first opposition leader in Russia to receive a lengthy prison sentence in recent years. There would be others, heralding a crackdown on dissent that became more punishing with the invasion of Ukraine. In the three years since Navalny lost his freedom, multiple prominent dissidents were imprisoned, while others fled Russia under pressure.

Many of them nevertheless persisted in challenging Mr. Putin — organising abroad, pushing for sanctions on Russia, supporting like-minded Russians in exile or continuing to speak out from behind bars.

These are some of the key remaining figures:

Navalny’s core team

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. Most Russian opposition figures are currently either in prison or in exile abroad. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Colleagues at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which Navalny founded in 2011 to expose political corruption, and his other close associates often had to work without him. Even before he was imprisoned in January 2021, Navalny was subject to regular arrests and long jail stints.

In 2020, he was poisoned with a nerve agent, spent 18 days in a coma and recuperated in Germany for weeks. His prison term included more than 300 days in isolation, with communication possible but difficult from a punishment cell.

His closest associates — top strategist Leonid Volkov, head of investigations Maria Pevchikh, foundation director Ivan Zhdanov and spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh — also faced unrelenting pressure and prosecution in Russia. In recent years, all left the country and worked from abroad, providing political commentary and the foundation’s signature YouTube exposes of political corruption.

They kept pushing for Navalny’s release from prison, organised protests and mounted a campaign to undermine Mr. Putin’s image in Russia ahead of a presidential election he is almost certain to win next month.

“Alexei was awesome,” Mr. Volkov wrote Sunday on X, formerly Twitter. “He was a natural politician, very talented, very efficient. And from himself and from everyone around him, he demanded one thing: not to throw in the towel, not to give up, not to despair. … This is what he wants from us now. His life’s work must prevail.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Exiled Russian businessman and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky poses during an interview in London. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, is one of several Russian opposition politicians trying to build a coalition with grassroots anti-war groups across the world and exiled Russian opposition figures. File

Exiled Russian businessman and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky poses during an interview in London. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, is one of several Russian opposition politicians trying to build a coalition with grassroots anti-war groups across the world and exiled Russian opposition figures. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 60, is a former tycoon turned Russian opposition figure in exile. Mr. Khodorkovsky spent a decade in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging Mr. Putin’s rule in the early 2000s. He was released in 2013, shortly before Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. A surprise pardon from Mr. Putin on the eve of the Olympics was widely seen as an effort by the Kremlin to improve Russia’s image in the West.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was flown to Germany and later settled in London. From exile, he launched Open Russia, an opposition group that ran its own news outlet, supported candidates in various elections, provided legal aid to defendants facing politically motivated prosecutions and had an educational platform.

Open Russia and its activists the country faced constant pressure from the authorities; some were prosecuted in Russia, and one of its leaders, Andrei Pivovarov, is currently serving a four-year prison term.

The group eventually shut down, but Mr. Khodorkovsky continued his vocal criticism of the Kremlin. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago this week, he and other prominent Putin critics, including chess legend Garry Kasparov and former lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, formed the Antiwar Committee, a broad opposition alliance that opposes the invasion and seeks to undermine Mr. Putin.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza gestures standing in a glass cage in a courtroom. File

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza gestures standing in a glass cage in a courtroom. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Once a journalist and now a prominent opposition politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, received the longest single sentence handed to a Kremlin critic in Mr. Putin’s Russia — 25 years on charges of treason. He is serving the sentence in a Siberian penal colony and has been repeatedly placed in solitary confinement.

Mr. Kara-Murza was an associate of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, another fierce Putin critic who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015. A few years before that, Mr. Kara-Murza and Mr. Nemtsov lobbied for passage of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S. The law was a response to the prison death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had exposed a tax fraud scheme. It authorised Washington to impose sanctions on Russians deemed to be human rights violators.

Mr. Kara-Murza survived what he believes were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017 but kept returning to Russia despite concerns that it might be unsafe for him to do so. Since his April 2022 arrest, he has continued to speak out against Mr. Putin and the war in Ukraine in multiple opinion columns and letters written from behind bars. His wife, Yevgenia, has also actively campaigned to secure freedom for him and other jailed Kremlin critics.

Ilya Yashin

Russian opposition activist and former municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district Ilya Yashin gestures, smiling. File

Russian opposition activist and former municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district Ilya Yashin gestures, smiling. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

Ilya Yashin, 40, refused to leave Russia despite the unprecedented pressure authorities applied to stifle dissent. He said that getting out of the country would undermine his value as a politician.

Mr. Yashin, an uncompromising member of a Moscow municipal council, was a vocal ally of Navalny’s. He eventually was arrested in June 2022 and later sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian military, a criminal offence since March 2022.

The harsh sentence didn’t silence his sharp criticism of the Kremlin. Mr. Yashin’s associates regularly update his social media pages with messages he relays from prison. His YouTube channel has over 1.5 million subscribers. In a prison interview with AP in September 2022, Mr. Yashin urged ordinary Russians to help spread the word, too.

“Demand for an alternative point of view has appeared in society,” Mr. Yashin told the AP in written answers from behind bars.

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Navalny is the latest martyr of Russian totalitarianism

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

The choice which now has to be made is not whether to appease the Kremlin or go into an open conflict with it. The choice now is either to stop Russia in Ukraine or be forced to fight a resurgent Moscow in defence of Eastern Europe as a whole, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

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As much as the news of Alexei Navalny’s sudden death on Friday came as an intense shock, it’s hard to escape the blood-curdling shadow of its inevitability. 

It’s as if all democratically inclined Russians, and those who study the Russian society, knew all along that Navalny would be taken out of the picture by Vladimir Putin at some point, but at the same time hoped that it, by some miracle, not come to pass. 

The death of Navalny is not and cannot be treated as an accident. Since no factual and fair investigation can be conducted in the totalitarian Russia of today, the causes of his death will remain a mystery. 

There is no point in believing that even his remains will survive for long after they are laid to rest as they carry important evidence. 

What is true, however, is that, in August 2020, before his imprisonment, Navalny was poisoned by a neurotoxin which left permanent detrimental consequences on his health; he was kept in solitary confinement for most of his prison term, and he complained about the lack of proper medical care. 

Given the facts, his death was premeditated and orchestrated by the Russian machine of repression, even if he was not directly poisoned for the second time (which can still very well be the real cause of his death after all).

A pattern of propaganda reveals a sinister farce

The handling of Navalny’s sudden death by the Russian state propaganda follows the same pattern as in the case of his poisoning. 

There are always two versions of events that transpired — one, it was an accident, and two, it was the work of the “Anglo-Saxon” security services. 

The accidental death is the official version, the narrative which comes from the Russian penitentiary authorities. In the case of Navalny’s poisoning, the official version was that he had a medical condition and was not poisoned at all, which independent medical analysis in Germany later refuted. 

The unofficial version stems from the Russian state media propagandists and state-operated blogs. 

Their narratives coalesce and by the rule of thumb all claim that Russia had no motive to eliminate Navalny so it must have been the “perfidious Anglo-Saxons” who stand to benefit the most. 

Once one analyzes Russian narratives for years, these patterns become obvious and impossible to miss. They can only instill doubt in those outside of Russia who think about Putin’s totalitarian prison camp only in passing.

Make no mistake: The siloviki are in charge in Moscow

The final elimination of Navalny, when he was already exiled to a maximum security prison in the Arctic Circle, sends a clear message that the Kremlin has stopped pretending that it cares one bit whether it’s seen as a civilised country ruled by law or a thuggish concentration camp with neon-lit commercials. 

The great pretence, which lasted in Russia for almost two decades, was founded upon the balance of two wings of its elite — the hawkish siloviki, agents of the security services and high-ranking military officers, and the capable technocrats, disinterested in empire-building as well as in democracy, and concerned only with the continuous functioning of the political and economic system. 

By engaging in a large-scale war he could not quickly win — or win at all — Putin has transferred all the real power to the military-security wing. 

The people like former FSB director Nikolai Patrushev now effectively govern Russia. They have taken over the political sphere, they have captured even the sphere of culture, where blacklists of undesirable actors, directors or performers have already been made and have left, for the time being, only the area of the economy in the hands of the technocrats. 

The siloviki want the West to know that they mean to go all the way, hence the nuclear threats in space, combined by the elimination of Navalny, all taking place during the Munich Security Conference. 

The thugs who now rule Russia are feeling quite confident; they are emboldened by the polling from the United States, which gives Donald Trump a slight advantage over President Joe Biden, and by the fact that much-needed military aid to Ukraine, currently awaiting the approval of the US House of Representatives, has been postponed on the urging of Trump and his allies in the Republican Party. 

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The siloviki believe that victory is within their grasp. Eliminating Navalny is a clear sign of their confidence.

Between a rock and a hard place, the choice has to be made anyway

In the death of Navalny, however, Russia has gained yet another symbol of democratic martyrdom, as much as it lacks democratic opposition leaders. 

Better yet, it lacks an organised and unified liberal opposition. The million-ruble question is: who is next? Who will step up as the leader of the anti-totalitarian movement in Russia? 

The answer right now might as well be no one — at least in the few years of totalitarianism that are still ahead for Russia. Only the tawing process of transition from totalitarianism and back to authoritarianism can provide enough liberties for the opposition to once again start to form. 

That transition — as undemocratic as it will inevitably be — will most likely come from the top, and in order for that to be induced, Putin and the siloviki, who hold all the power in Russia, must hit a wall in Ukraine. 

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This has to be a wall made not only of Ukrainian bravery and sacrifice, but of Western resolve to contain Moscow’s aggression before it engulfs more of Europe, and, eventually, most of the continent. 

The choice which now has to be made, first and foremost by the White House and Brussels, is not whether to appease the Kremlin or go into an open conflict with it.

The choice is either to stop Russia in Ukraine or be forced to fight a resurgent Moscow in defence of Eastern Europe as a whole.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. Formerly, he was a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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West mounts pressure on Russia after Navalny’s death in prison

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Western nations Saturday mounted pressure on Russia, blaming its leader and the government for the death of leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison in opaque circumstances.

Navalny’s death was announced on Friday after three years in detention and a poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. 

It deprives Russia‘s opposition of its figurehead just a month before an election poised to extend President Vladimir Putin‘s hold on power and comes at a time of intense repression and as Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine nears its two-year anniversary.


The West blamed Putin and his government for the 47-year-old’s death which followed months of deteriorating health in harsh detention conditions.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Saturday said Navalny’s “heroic opposition to Putin’s repressive and unjust regime inspired the world”.

“We hold the Russian Government solely responsible for his treatment and death in prison,” Wong said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.


US President Joe Biden was equally blunt, saying: “Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death”.

Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov added: “Alexei Navalny was tortured and tormented for three years… Murder was added to Alexei Navalny‘s sentence”.

The death was announced by Russia‘s federal penitentiary service, which said Navalny “felt bad after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness”.

Russian news agencies reported that medics from a local hospital arrived within minutes and spent more than “half an hour” trying to resuscitate him.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said she held Putin personally responsible and called on the international community to “unite and defeat this evil, terrifying regime”.

Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and won a huge following as he campaigned against corruption under Putin. 

Putin – who famously never referred to Navalny by name – was on a visit to the Urals on Friday and made no mention of the death.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Western leaders of “absolutely unacceptable” and “hysterical” reactions to Navalny’s death.

Moscow authorities also warned the public against taking part in any protests as videos shared online showed dozens of Russians laying flowers at monuments to victims of political repression in different Russian cities.

At least one person was detained for holding up a placard that appeared to say “murderers” in a video posted by the independent Sota Telegram channel.

Russia’s OVD-Info rights group said police on Saturday detained over 100 people gathered at spontaneous memorials for Navalny across the country.

As of February 17, “more than 101 people have already been detained in 10 cities” including 11 in the capital Moscow, OVD-Info said on its website.

‘Brutally murdered’ 

One of Navalny’s lawyers, Leonid Solovyov, told Novaya Gazeta newspaper that he was “normal” when another lawyer saw him on Wednesday.

In footage of a court hearing from his prison colony on Thursday, Navalny was seen smiling and joking as he addressed the judge by video link. State media reported he raised no health complaints during the session.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference hours after news of her husband’s death, Yulia Navalnaya said Putin and his entourage “will be punished for everything they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Navalny had “paid for his courage with his life”.

Britain’s Foreign Office said it had summoned the Russian embassy “to make clear that we hold the Russian authorities fully responsible” for Navalny’s death.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said his death “reminds us of the reality of Putin’s regime” and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Navalny had been “killed by Putin”. 

UN chief Antonio Guterres called for “a full, credible and transparent investigation”.

The Russian foreign ministry hit back, saying the way Western leaders blamed Russia for his death showed their hypocrisy.

“There is no forensic examination yet, but the West already has conclusions ready,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to state news agency TASS.

‘I’m not afraid’ 

Navalny, who led street protests for more than a decade, became a household name through his anti-corruption campaigning.

His exposes of official corruption, posted on his YouTube channel, racked up millions of views and brought tens of thousands of Russians to the streets, despite harsh anti-protest laws.

He was jailed in early 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was recovering from a near-fatal poisoning attack with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

In a string of cases, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges widely condemned by rights groups and in the West as retribution for his opposition to the Kremlin.

His return to Russia despite knowing he would face jail brought him admiration. 

“I’m not afraid and I call on you not to be afraid,” he said in an appeal to supporters as he landed in Moscow, moments before being detained on charges linked to an old fraud conviction.

His 2021 arrest spurred some of the largest demonstrations Russia had seen in decades, and thousands were detained at rallies nationwide calling for his release.

From behind bars he was a staunch opponent of Moscow’s full-scale military offensive against Ukraine, and watched on, helplessly, as the Kremlin dismantled his organisation and locked up his allies.

Dozens of his top supporters fled into exile and continued to campaign against the offensive on Ukraine and repression inside Russia.

‘Don’t do nothing’ 

Late last year, Navalny was moved to a remote Arctic prison colony in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets region in northern Siberia.

He said in January that his daily routine included prison walks in freezing temperatures.

Since being jailed in 2021, he spent more than 300 days in solitary confinement, where prison authorities kept him over alleged minor infringements of prison rules.

The last post on Navalny’s Telegram channel, which he managed through his lawyers and team in exile, was a tribute to his wife posted on Valentine’s Day.

In a documentary filmed before he returned to Russia, Navalny was asked what message he wanted to leave to the Russian people should he die or be killed.

“Don’t give up. You mustn’t, you can’t give up,” he said.

“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Therefore, don’t do nothing.”

(AFP) 



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Death of Alexei Navalny decimates the Russian opposition

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The death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has further diminished a rapidly shrinking Russian opposition, which has seen its members assassinated, sentenced to lengthy prison terms or forced into exile as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes it clear he will not tolerate challenges to his regime. 

It was widely feared that Alexei Navalny was risking his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia, even challenging him for the presidency in 2018. 

Navalny narrowly survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany. He earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia the following year.

His death comes just a day before the official launch of campaigning ahead of a new round of presidential elections set for March 15-17.

Putin oversaw changes to the constitution in 2021 that will allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. Putin is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

On December 8 Putin announced his candidature for re-election and is widely expected to win, given the lack of political alternatives and the Kremlin’s iron grip on the state apparatus. 

Those who have been brave enough to defy Putin ahead of the vote have been stymied by legal challenges.

Former legislator Yekaterina Duntsova was barred in December from challenging Putin when the Central Election Commission said it was refusing to accept her nomination, citing errors in submitted documents that included misspelled names. Duntsova said she would appeal the decision at the Supreme Court and appealed to the Yabloko (Apple) party to nominate her as a candidate after the party’s founder and leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, said he would not be challenging Putin for the presidency. 

Duntsova has said she wants to see a more “humane” Russia that is “peaceful, friendly and ready to cooperate with everyone on the principle of respect”.

Another anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, was also disqualified from the vote. Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected legal challenges to the ruling but Nadezhdin said he would appeal and file a further claim against the electoral commission’s refusal to register him as a candidate.

“I don’t give up and I won’t give up,” he said.

An Arctic prison

Navalny was Putin’s most vocal critic and the one who garnered the most international recognition, winning the EU’s Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2021.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin found a way to remove him from the running. Navalny was sentenced to 19 more years in prison in August last year for extremism. He was already serving a nine-year term for embezzlement and other charges that he maintained were politically motivated.

Navalny briefly disappeared in December from the IK-6 prison colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres east of Moscow, where he had spent most of his detention. His disappearance provoked widespread international alarm, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken releasing a statement on X shortly before Christmas to say he was “deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Aleksey Navalny”.

After sending hundreds of requests to detention centres across Russia, Navalny’s allies managed to locate him. In a series of sardonic messages published on X shortly thereafter, Navalny said he was “fine” and “relieved” that he had arrived at his new – and much more remote – Arctic prison.  

A BBC reporter said Navalny “looked to be fine” when he appeared via video link at a court hearing the day before his death.

 

A decimated opposition

Putin’s critics have long had the unfortunate habit of dying prematurely.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 48, was an investigative reporter at top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya. She was shot dead in 2006 at the entrance to her Moscow apartment block. Five men were sentenced and imprisoned over her death in 2014; one of them, a former policeman, was pardoned and released last year after fighting in Ukraine.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned Putin critic, died after drinking green tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 at a London hotel in November 2006, six years to the day after he fled Russia for Britain. In a 326-page report on his death, a UK judge said the killing was “probably approved” by Putin.

Opposition politician and former deputy PM Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near Red Square in Moscow in 2015. At the time of his death, the 55-year-old Nemtsov was working on a report that he believed proved the Kremlin’s direct involvement in the pro-Russian separatist rebellion that had erupted in eastern Ukraine the year prior.

Read moreThe mysterious fates met by Putin critics

 

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a brief but dramatic march on Moscow last June after becoming an increasingly vocal critic of Putin’s handling of the war in Ukraine. After hours of uncertainty the rebellion fizzled, and Prigozhin reportedly agreed to go into exile in Belarus. 

He died in a private plane crash two months after launching his aborted challenge. Grenade fragments were found in the bodies of victims at the crash site, according to the Kremlin. 

Others have found themselves behind bars, serving lengthy prison sentences. Amid the war in Ukraine, a law criminalising “discrediting the Russian armed forces” was adopted on March 4, 2022; in the three days that followed, more than 60 cases were opened against those accused of violating the new law, “the vast majority” of them peaceful anti-war protesters, according to Human Rights Watch. 

Russian political activist and former journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, was sentenced last April to 25 years in prison for publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and spreading “false” information about the Russian military, among other charges. 

Kara-Murza, a member of the rapidly shrinking group of opposition figures who remain in Russia, said he was determined to be a voice against both Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel condemned the sentencing. “Mr. Kara-Murza is yet another target of the Russian government’s escalating campaign of repression.  We renew our call for Mr. Kara-Murza’s release, as well as the release of the more than 400 political prisoners in Russia,” Patel said at the time.

Read moreLast remaining voices of the Russian opposition are being silenced amid war in Ukraine

The death of Navalny further weakens a Russian opposition already decimated by death and imprisonment, with others having fled into exile over fears for their safety. 

There are almost “no options for expressing criticism” in Russia, where repression has reached a scale “unequalled since the end of World War II”, Russia expert Cécile Vaissié of Rennes-II University told FRANCE 24 shortly after Kara-Murza was sentenced. 

But she said a few voices do remain, and their presence in Russia carries “symbolic weight” – even if they are prevented from wielding any real power.     

Read more‘Putin has decided to become the new Stalin’: Exiled Russian dissident Vladimir Osechkin

(AFP, AP and Reuters) 



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