The return of Navalny to Russia, a loose cannon for the Putinian power system
Navalny's return is precipitating events in Russia. Perhaps in the West we tend to attribute too much importance to developments in recent days, but it is undeniable that the figure of Putin's most famous opponent is assuming, also thanks to the Kremlin's suicide tactics, a completely unimaginable relevance until a few months ago.
The series of measures put in place by the Russian authorities on Sunday evening to neutralize the media coverage of his repatriation verges on the grotesque: an airport closed and evacuated by the police, a flight diverted to another destination in spite of every security procedure, an arrest on the runway a few minutes after landing. This was followed the next morning by an impromptu hearing in a police station on the outskirts of Moscow, at the end of which Navalny was sentenced to one month in custody pending review of a trial for fraud that could cost him as much as at least three years in prison. Last Tuesday, the last twist (for the moment). From the Matrosskaya Tishina prison, not far from the center of Moscow, Navalny had his staff publish a two-hour video-investigation on a presidential mega-residence (" as big as 39 principalities of Monaco ") in the town of Gelendzhik, on the Black Sea. , whose title leaves no room for interpretation: “ Putin's palace. The story of the biggest bribe ever ”. A deal worth one and a half billion dollars which, according to the authors of the documentary, involves Rosneft , Transneft and Gazprom , through a complex system of investee and trust companies:
“The most secret and guarded facility in the country. This is not a country house, it is not a cottage , it is not a residence – it is an entire city, or rather a kingdom. It has impregnable fences, its own port, its own security system, a church, a no-fly zone and even a border checkpoint . It is like a separate state within Russia. And in this state there is only one and irreplaceable tsar: Putin ”.
More than a tsar, a godfather. The work is accompanied by maps, graphic reconstructions of the interior of the complex and the surrounding land, details of maintenance costs and so on. A large-scale media revenge destined to corroborate the accusations of corruption at the top of the state, which the foundation headed by Navalny has been committed to documenting for years and which are the main reason, even more than the strictly political aspect, of the judicial persecution of which the activist has been the subject since 2013.
While on Monday evening in Moscow the police took him to prison, a giant picture of his face was projected on some buildings in Minsk as a sign of solidarity. Putin may perhaps continue to ignore the diplomatic reactions and even the economic sanctions of the West but if there is one scenario that he cannot afford, it is the welding of the Belarusian protest with the domestic resentment towards its system of power. Saturday will be the first test, in which the government and the extra-parliamentary opposition will measure their respective state of health in the demonstrations that Navalny himself called before entering the cell: “ Do not do it for me but for you. Don't be afraid, take to the streets ”.
Navalny is neither Sakharov nor Putin's Russia resembles the Soviet totalitarian moloch . But certainly the persistence and courage of an opponent who was dying in a hospital bed in Berlin in August and today returns to his homeland to challenge the same regime that tried to wipe it out are disturbing signs that Putinism will continue. . From a tactical point of view, the Kremlin has shown an even surprising inability, managing in a few months to transform an activist with a marginal following within Russian society into a hero of the anti-Putin resistance. The substantial failure of the operation of the secret services, unable to kill him with the Novichok and then unmasked by Navalny himself in a telephone call-confession that will go down in the history of the FSB, more than an isolated episode risks being the symptom of a progressive degradation of the system that Putin created in his image and likeness. It is widely believed among Russian experts that the services are now assuming a preponderant role in the management of internal affairs, with the presidential approval.
From this point of view, the Navalny case must be seen first of all as a settling of scores between a humiliated state apparatus and an atypical character, their communication strategies and whose political intentions the regime is unable to fully understand. Hence the most obvious reaction, the arrest, the probable sentence, the attempt to get rid of him, if not physically at least socially, for the next few years. The final years of Putinism precisely, those of a transition that, according to plan, will have to be controlled from above and cannot afford any deviations.
Not that Navalny has suddenly become the darling of the crowds, the Russians will cautiously await events, but it is clear that his figure has taken on a political and moral dimension that probably goes beyond his own merits: for the first time Putin must do to deal with a crazy variable, with a direct challenge to his power cog, at a time when his consensus is waning, the uncertain economic situation and the tacit pact that guaranteed him to remain at the top for 20 years is weakening , while the population – especially among the urban middle classes – perceives that the leader no longer has much to offer.
According to political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya, 2021 will be the year in which Putinism will accentuate the repression to make itself impervious to any internal threat. The Kremlin's nightmare is a return to the summer of 2019, when protests over the exclusion of opposition candidates in local elections lasted for weeks and seriously undermined the responsiveness and management of the authorities. But it is also the precedents of Bolotnaya Square of 2011-2012 that sound the alarm bell and portend a further authoritarian squeeze of which the Navalny case and the latest anti-NGO regulations would be only the prodromes. In September there will be a vote to renew the Duma and any result below a two-thirds majority would be considered a failure for the United Russia presidential party , subject to all considerations on the regularity of the vote.
What to do with Navalny remains a controversial question even among Putin's loyalists. On the one hand (technocrats, economic sector) there are those who believe that a relentless struggle will not bring benefits to the regime and in the long run will destabilize Russian society; on the other ( siloviki , FSB) there are those who consider Navalny as a criminal and as such subject to the weight of the law in all possible forms. It is the latter that is prevailing and which explains the current circumstances of his detention. Leaving the opponent room for maneuver has only created problems, Putin and his security apparatus think: the era of political games is over and Navalny must be neutralized, with poison or with prison. It matters little if the world protests, the Kremlin's reputation is now compromised, better concentrate on maintaining the system regardless of the international repercussions.
Moreover, on the essential issues (energy) Moscow has obtained European Union (read Germany) sufficient guarantees that nothing will change in practice: the only retaliation able to hurt it would suspend indefinitely the completion of the Nordstream 2, but simply this measure is not on the horizon because, if Navalny is important, gas is much more so. While waiting to verify what the policy of the new American administration will be towards Russia (personally I do not foresee any shocks, beyond a more assertive rhetoric) and of the offending pipeline (here instead there could be news in the form of further sanctions), it is not then to Brussels or Berlin that we will have to look for answers on the Navalny case, but on the internal situation.
With his return, Navalny challenges not only the authoritarian and corrupt president but also the conformism of civil society, on whose reaction will probably depend much more than the personal future of the opponent. The judicial proceedings against him are different and the most likely scenario is that of an accumulation of short sentences that will exclude him from the electoral and political game of the coming years. But the prison is also an infected wound for Putin, who thus sanctions a sort of permanent conflict between power and civil society, in which no one can feel completely safe, not even within the ruling elite . Either with Putin or against him, Navalny's challenge cuts with the hatchet the balance of an orthopedic stability imposed from above and hitherto generally accepted by the Russians.
It is not just a question of measuring the extent of the likely protests in the coming weeks but of analyzing in the medium term the impact that the persecution of Navalny will have on the consensus, still solid but nevertheless declining, towards the Putin presidency. With no patriotic adventures in sight (Crimea, 2014) to be used in a domestic key, Putin and his entourage find themselves having to deal only with reality: an increasingly nationalized economy (70 percent public participation vs. 25 per cent at the beginning of the mandate), rampant corruption, almost zero economic growth, a real value of wages 15 per cent lower than six years ago and – for the first time – a possible political alternative frontally opposed to current command structure. Navalny's main merit does not lie in a concrete reform program or in a vision of the country's future yet to be outlined but in having shown that the fortress is no longer unassailable and that power ultimately largely depends on the fear that it is capable of arousing in those who are subjected to it. Today Putin is a little less afraid and shows he has a little more.
The post Navalny's return to Russia, a loose cannon for Putin's power system appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-ritorno-di-navalny-mina-vagante-per-il-sistema-di-potere-putiniano/ on Thu, 21 Jan 2021 04:54:00 +0000.