Prison Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has, according to the latest analysis, conquered President Vladimir Putin as Russia’s most popular politician on social media, highlighting the growing threat he poses to the country’s authorities.
State-run media in Russia have made an effort to protect Navalny’s name and face from the masses, and have often dismissed him as a ‘blogger’, citing an attempt to diminish his status as a political power.
But in the month since his return to Berlin, where he returned to Russia for Novichok poisoning, Navalny’s profile has exploded.
Analysis by the online Russian language publication Open Media found that between January 17, when he was detained at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, and February 16, he was mentioned almost 10.8 million times on social media – or 1.3 million times more than Putin.
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That is more than half of the 18 million citations Navalny received for the whole of 2020, when he was the fourth most-named politician, far behind the 96 million citations Putin achieved.
The data was collected from blogs and social networks such as Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, as well as TikTok, which the Kremlin warned last month to encourage underage protesters to take up the protest.
Perhaps more important is Navalny’s growing presence in federal and regional media, where he has been mentioned 226,000 times – second only to Putin’s 291,000 times.
On federal television, Navalny was referred to 447 times, three times less than Putin (1397), but still made him the second most important politician, ahead of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (281).
The increase in interest in Navalny came when people took to the streets across Russia during protests with his arrest and jail time for violating parole conditions in a decision he said was politically motivated.
A video that has been viewed more than 110 million times has been viewed by its Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which claims that Putin owned a $ 1.3 billion property in the Black Sea.
How this could result in political support among the population is unclear.
Senior collaborator at the Moscow Carnegie Center Alexander Baumov wrote this week that Navalny and his team ‘are brilliant at generating media attention, viral content and a large number of viewers of his anti-corruption videos.
“But this popularity cannot necessarily be translated offline into active support,” he said.
The conversion of Navalny’s suspended sentence to a 32-month prison sentence has sparked worldwide outrage. Despite Russia’s membership of the Council of Europe, Moscow has said it will ignore an order from the European Court of Human Rights to liberate Navalny.
According to RIA Novosti, Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the consequences of the ECHR decision for international law would be “disastrous, as it is impossible to use endless legal instruments for political purposes.”
On Thursday, the global civil society, CIVICUS, placed Russia on a watch list of countries concerned, fighting human rights over the brutality of the protest against protests in which about 11,000 people, including journalists, were arrested.
With Navalny’s FBK focusing on making an impact on the September parliamentary elections, protests have apparently been postponed. There is a shift in tactics, and many were encouraged on Sunday to show their support by flashing a light in their courtyards.
“It was something that people across the country could do to see that they are not alone in confronting oppression and injustice,” said Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director of FBK. Newsweek.
“This is a low-risk activity compared to going out into the streets and confronting the security police directly,” he said. “It’s another step, there will be others.”
The image below by Statista shows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s time in power.
