The opposition leader was poisoned and sent to a brutal prison camp where he is reported to have died.
Reports of the death of Russia’s most famous opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, in an Arctic prison camp are shocking, but not entirely unexpected. It draws a line under Russia’s political development over the past two decades by highlighting that a challenge from within is no longer possible.
Active in Russian politics for more than 20 years, Navalny’s main focus was identifying and rooting out state corruption, an issue with almost limitless material in modern Russia. He embraced new methods of bringing his investigations to as wide an audience as he could, notably the internet, particularly via his YouTube channel. Some of his most popular clips have tens of millions of views.
But the protests prompted the Kremlin to change tack and experiment with allowing the opposition to stand in elections. Navalny was the main beneficiary, being registered for the Moscow mayoral elections in the summer of 2013. This was Navalny’s only real chance of winning power in Russia’s tightly controlled electoral system.
Last roll of the dice Elections in today’s Russia are a foregone conclusion, but they are also a potential vulnerability for the Kremlin. There is a fine balance that the Kremlin has to strike between control of elections and their legitimacy. Too much control, or outright fraud, and the legitimising value of the elections is reduced.
This strategy didn’t produce the desired result of getting Navalny on to the ballot. But it seemed to rattle the authorities enough to want to take care of the “Navalny problem”. Navalny’s fate became the main point of contention for Moscow in its dealings with western governments and media. Navalny was the obligatory subject of high-level contacts with the Russian authorities, with Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan warning that Russia would suffer consequences if Navalny died in prison.
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