The Kremlin is striving for the reputation of Alexei Navalny as the opposition leader is sent to a prison colony in Russia, a trip to a ‘gray area’ where supporters say he will need maximum international support to ensure his safety.
Navalny was a phantom in the Russian state media for many years, and his name was meticulously absent from the top officials and news anchors. A popular game among the opposition was to write his name on a snow bank – municipal workers would often show up shortly afterwards to wipe it away.
But now he has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison on a charge of embezzlement. The Kremlin and its supporters emphasized his role in nationalist politics in the 2000s and used the courts to portray him as unpatriotic.
In the month since his arrest, he has been convicted of defaming a World War II veteran, a crime that did not add time to his sentence but made an unpleasant appearance in first-time news programs. .
And then, describing some Amnesty International employees as a capitulation to a ‘coordinated campaign’, the human rights organization stopped describing him as a ‘prisoner of conscience’, a decision that, according to allies, would put pressure on Russia relieved to release him immediately. .
“The key to getting rid of him is to apply the most pressure domestically … but also internationally,” said Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of Navalny, who called for sanctions against Russia. officials and businessmen. “That the status was so openly taken away from him, of course, harms Alexei’s reputation … and it propagates malice and doubt and that is what the perpetrators of this have tried to achieve.”
Amnesty International has denied the allegations, saying “propaganda by Russian authorities is recognizable as such”. But figures like Margarita Simonyan, the head of the state-funded RT news network, took a victory and wrote that ‘our columnist used concrete examples that reminded everyone [Navalny] is a Nazi ”.
The decision comes days before Navalny’s transfer from a Moscow jail to a prison colony begins somewhere in Russia, a journey during which he will disappear days or even weeks before his location is announced. Russia ignored the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights to free him because his safety could not be ensured in a prison.
Amnesty has said it will continue to push for the release of Navalny, but supporters say the move has already caused real damage. Some, such as Navalny ally Leonid Volkov, said the organization’s leadership was ‘inappropriate’. Others said they would demand that the organization return the status to Navalny.
“What they’re trying to do is eliminate international support for him … to create doubt as to whether we should support this man. Is this a good guy? ” says Jamison Firestone, a lawyer who previously worked with Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer who died in a Russian prison in 2009, and campaigned for sanctions against Russian officials.
The issue is whether a series of videos from the early 2000s produced by the opposing migrant workers of Navalny – as well as his refusal to apologize for them – are the public campaign for his release from prison, driven by his investigation into corruption and for protests against Vladimir Putin.
Amnesty said its decision was internal and that attention was diverted to secure Navalny’s release. But in a telephone conversation with a Russian joker posing as Volkov, senior Amnesty officials acknowledged that the decision “did a lot of damage” and that “at the moment we may have done more harm than good”.
Navalny began his long period of transfer to a Russian prison colony on Thursday night etapirovaniye, where even relatives can lose the prisoners for days or weeks.
His lawyer, Vladimir Kobzev, said he did not know where Navalny was being sent.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s longtime press secretary, said: ‘It’s always a gray area if no one knows where he’s going or how long it will take. Neither his relatives nor his lawyers, nor even the prisoners themselves, have any information. It’s hell in itself, but in Alexei’s case, just like in jail, it’s a threat to his life. ‘