Russia, Putin and Alexei Navalny: What happens next?

The jail term of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russia has been widely anticipated by Russian viewers, but experts say what comes next will likely depend on the momentum of protests in support of Navalny, whether the West decides to punish Russia and how the Kremlin responds to increasing unrest in the country.

Navalny, considered one of Putin’s most prominent critics, was sentenced on Tuesday to three and a half years in prison for parole. The charges he and his team brought were captured and politically motivated.

The judge said the year Navalny had already spent under house arrest (about ten months) was deducted from his prison sentence. Navalny’s defense team said it would appeal against the court’s ruling.

Demonstrations over Navalny’s initial detention in mid-January and immediately after his return from Germany to Russia, where he has been treated for a nerve agent poisoning since last summer, have been seen across Russia over the past two weekends and again outside Moscow court on Tuesday. has been pronounced.

The verdict was widely condemned by Western governments, but the US and Europe stopped threatening further sanctions against Russia, both calling for Navalny’s immediate and unconditional release.

U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, hinted in a tweet that more sanctions could be imposed on Russia, which is already operating under Western restrictions following the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and interference in the U.S. election in 2016, including crimes.

Timothy Ash, a senior emerging markets strategist at Bluebay Asset Management, believes more sanctions are coming.

“We may not see this action this week, it may take weeks / a few months, but I think if it does, we will be surprised at the extent / extent of it,” Ash said in an email.

“This is not a case of a one-piece approach, but a holistic, combined / holistic approach to countering Russia’s threat. And to hitting Russia hard from the start – to make it clear to Putin. we know what you’re doing, we’ve marked your ticket, we know you only understand power / strength, and here it is. “

Ash said he expected a “continuous approach to push back Putin’s insulting campaign against Western liberal market democracies.”

Although the extent and extent of the West’s response to Russia has yet to be seen, it could also have an impact on the momentum of pro-Navalny protests in Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said police were justified in using harsh methods to break up the protests of Navalny’s supporters who gathered outside the court in Moscow where the trial took place.

Peskov also said the calls from Navalny’s allies to take Russians to the streets after his jail sentence on Tuesday were a provocation, Reuters reported. According to the OVD-Info monitoring group, more than 1,400 Navalny supporters were detained in ten cities on Tuesday.

The US, Germany and France are among the Western countries that have condemned the violence against protesters in Russia and demanded that Navalny be released immediately.

Russia has rejected this criticism, defending the police response to protests and accusing Western countries of double standards.

“As for the events in Russia, and not just with Navalny, the West’s coverage is selective and one-sided,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference on Wednesday.

“The hysteria, which we have heard regarding the trial in the Navalny case, has gone much further,” he added.

Daragh McDowell, chief Russian analyst at risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft, said Navalny’s sentencing and imprisonment “would be a huge blow to the opposition, which lost one of its most effective organizers and communicators.”

The move was further dived in, as other members of Navalny’s national organization were also targeted for arrests and detention, he noted, and whether protest marches could continue at their current level was unknown.

“The key question is whether the current wave of protests arrested by Navalny has reached a point where they are self-sustaining and will continue even if he and his team are removed from the field. “is likely to cause at least a short-term increase in street protests, coupled with a corresponding increase in arrests and aggressive police brutality,” McDowell noted.

Experts warn what is more worrying for Putin is that the protests so far also reflect general public dissatisfaction with Russia’s ruling class, general corruption and kleptocracy and a decline in living standards.

McDowell said a “major point of concern for the Kremlin should be that the protests, although caused by Navalny’s arrest, are rather the result of long-term social and economic stagnation … the protesters are not so much affected by Navalny’s political program is not driven, as they are a general feeling that they are fed up with the status quo. ‘

Despite the apparent lack of political alternatives to Putin, which McDowell saw as no imminent danger of overthrow, ‘his political regime is not so much based on active support, but on tolerance and acceptance, and it seems as if the Russian population was rapidly approaching its borders. ‘

Christopher Granville, managing director of EMEA and global political research at TS Lombard, reflected this sentiment, but warned of a possible ‘deadlock’ between the Kremlin and the opposition.

“The main cause of the current political ferment in Russia is Vladimir Putin’s long rule entering its terminal phase. It is not the possibility of eliminating uncertainties (even at the expense of more acute turmoil in the short term). Social tension and promote polarization, ”he said in a note on Tuesday.

Granville said his troubled outlook for Russia, which was also negative for the country’s economic growth prospects and asset valuations, “stems from an important feature of the challenge facing Putin’s ruling Alexey Navalny: deadlock.”

“Every party’s support base in Russian society is too solid to allow quick or easy victories. Removing Navalny from the board, whether by assassination or, as now, imprisonment, is no ‘solution’: far from a personality cult, “The movement he galvanized is a generational shift. The Putin base, still a plurality, has meanwhile been strengthened by rational fears of instability,” he said.