When Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny returned to Russia in January, he threw down a glove at President Vladimir Putin’s authority.
It was a challenge the world was watching when Navalny – after poisoning a nerve agent months earlier – flew to Moscow.
The Kremlin’s response was blunt. Navalny was quickly sentenced to more than 2 1/2 years in prison in a trial that was internationally and politically motivated. The extraordinarily large protests in Russia that followed Navalny’s captivity were quickly and strongly suppressed as the authorities deployed the police on an unprecedented scale. Thousands were detained and hundreds were then fined or sentenced to short prison terms. Police targeted Navalny’s allies with a shower of raids and new criminal prosecutions, putting most of them in custody.
After two weekends of protests, in which so many people persisted that Moscow’s prisons and courts briefly supported, Navalny’s team postponed any further protests in the street until the summer.
Two months after Navalny’s return, the Kremlin has successfully put down the protests and reaffirmed its control. Navalny himself is now out of sight in a prison 60 miles east of Moscow. As the dust settles, the extent of the challenge Navalny himself is clear, but in recent weeks it has also contained long-term signs that will not please the Kremlin.
This result confirmed Putin’s ability to retain control, but it also points to an unattractive future for the Kremlin, where he must rely more and more on crude authoritarianism.
For the past two decades, Putin’s Kremlin has sought to maintain its power without resorting to naked repression, being able to rely on growing prosperity, and securing control over the Russian media and political institutions. But with polls weakening support for Putin among Russians and no obvious way to revive a stagnant economy, it is clear the period is over.
“I think both sides are probably disappointed with the result,” said Sam Greene, a professor of politics at Kings College London. “There is more opposition than the Kremlin wants to see and less opposition than Navalny and his team want to see.”
In many ways, the protests have confirmed the strength of Putin’s control. Although they were extraordinarily large for Russia, with tens of thousands of people, they were still not large. On the day Navalny was sentenced, only a few thousand people protested. The authorities have to put up unprecedented pressure on protesters, but it is in force.
“What we do not see are enough people coming out to change the nature of politics in Russia. “There is nothing that gives the Kremlin or the elite a signal that they cannot control the streets,” Greene said.
Independent polls show that, despite the drama, there was little influence on the Russians’ attitude towards Navalny and Putin. According to the independent pollster, the Levada Center, about 19% of Russians approve of Navalny’s actions, while 56% do not approve.
That is 6% more disapproval than before Navalny returned. The same polls in Levada show that confidence in Navalny among Russians has generally shrunk slightly, from 3 to 4%.
The vote indicates that the government has succeeded in controlling the story surrounding Navalny, said Denis Volkov, deputy director of the center.
State media portrayed the protests as violent riots mostly attended by adolescents. Immediately after his imprisonment, authorities also executed Navalny for allegedly slandering an elderly World War II veteran. The sometimes bizarre trial, criticized by politically motivated government groups, allowed state television to view Navalny as unpatriotic.
Much of Navalny’s success was using social media to circumvent the Kremlin’s control of the media. The best example is his recent film which reveals a lavish palace that was allegedly secretly built by Putin on the Black Sea. The film has now been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube. But the poll in the Levada Center showed that the film did not change the view of most people towards Putin, but rather strengthened those already held.
The majority of Russians remain apathetic and deeply cynical about political change, attitudes also cultivated by Kremlin propaganda, experts said, which poses a major challenge to Navalny’s efforts to mobilize them.
“Navalny paid an incredibly high price to increase his confidence by just 1 percent,” Andrey Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, recently wrote.
But the protests also underscored a much bigger problem for the Kremlin.
In recent years, approval from Putin and the authorities in general has eroded. Putin’s approval last year, according to a Levada Center poll, dropped to a lower level in a decade, reaching 59% in April last year: ‘If we look at the situation objectively, I think the problem is much more serious than Navalny’s. is the growth in social dissatisfaction, ”says Tatiana Stanovaya, who runs the political advisory bureau R.Politik.
Many of those who joined the recent protests said they were not there because of Navalny, but because of dissatisfaction with the direction of Russia.
The Kremlin is aware of its approval and is concerned about the example of the protests in Belarus, but is no longer willing to tolerate the risk posed by the opposition, experts said. At the same time, it cares much less about its reputation among Western countries. As a result, Russia is rapidly becoming more authoritarian. In recent years, the Russian parliament has adopted a deluge of draconian new laws that could punish criticism and further muzzle civil society groups.
“They’re moving in a much more Chinese direction, I would say,” Greene said.
Navalny’s team is trying to exploit the growing discontent with a tactical voice-over campaign aimed at undermining Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, which is far less popular than Putin himself. The campaign is called ‘Smart Voting’, and calls for people to vote for every candidate who has the best chance of beating the United Russia candidate, regardless of their party. Navalny’s team publishes election guides identifying the candidates, who often come from the Russian Communist Party.
Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s closest associates, said the election was now the main focus of the activists.
“We never said there could be just one event to overthrow Putin. That was never our plan, “Volkov told ABC News last month. “We have always said that we have a long-term strategy to build our organization. To attract more fans. But it is a long road that can take many years. ”
However, Navalny’s team faces a major challenge in influencing the election results, several experts said. In addition to suppressing the opposition and manipulating the field around the election, the Kremlin can also take root by giving a promise of social benefits before the election.
“The gradual erosion in support of the regime is underway, but it is very slow,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. ‘It can be delayed by using smart money to buy loyalty before political events. And once again, the regime knows all too well that the majority of the population is too passive to do anything meaningful to confront the regime. ”