Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has raised the stakes in his bid to become the nation’s president next year, putting him on course for a final showdown with his arch-rival, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Navalny on March 26 and June 12 organized the largest anti-corruption protests in Russia since the mass demonstrations against rigged parliamentary and presidential elections in 2011 to 2012.
It is still unclear whether the Kremlin will register Navalny as a presidential candidate. Putin will be tempted to remove his strongest competitor from the race, but may face even larger protests if Navalny is not allowed to run.
“It’s undesirable for the Kremlin to register him because he’s a strong rival,” Russian political analyst Georgy Satarov told the Kyiv Post. “But it’s also undesirable not to register him, because this may lead to a new wave of protests. (The Kremlin) is in a permanent deadlock.”
REGIONAL PROTESTS
Navalny was planning to organize an authorized rally on a non-central street in Moscow on June 12, the day of Russia’s proclamation of sovereignty in 1990. However, he transferred the rally to Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s main thoroughfare, without authorization because he said the Kremlin had banned all suppliers from giving him audio equipment.
The demonstrators were brutally dispersed from Tverskaya Street by riot police, and about 1,700 people were arrested nationwide. Serhiy Kusyuk, one of the Russian riot police officers who took part in the crackdown, was previously a Berkut police commander who is being investigated in Ukraine over a crackdown on EuroMaidan demonstrators in Kyiv in 2013.
The recent protests spread to smaller cities and towns that have never witnessed such activity in modern Russian history.
“Previously protests were mostly Moscow-centered,” Polyna Kostyleva, head of Navalny’s election headquarters in St. Petersburg, told the Kyiv Post. “Now we’re seeing regional protests.”
The June 12 protests were held in 187 Russian cities – an unprecedented number compared with previous protests. The March 26 rallies were held in 82 Russian cities, while the 2011-2012 protests were held in about 100 Russian cities.
NUMBERS
Kostyleva estimated the total number of people who participated in the June 12 demonstrations nationwide at 30,000 to 40,000.
The police, which tends to underestimate numbers at protest rallies, said 4,500 protesters attended the Moscow demonstration. The police also estimated the number of demonstrators in St. Petersburg at 3,500 people, while Kostyleva’s estimate was 10,000.
The March rallies were attended by 30,000 to 90,000 people nationwide, according to the Meduza news site. The Moscow rally on Tverskaya Street attracted 10,000 to 30,000 people, while 3,000 to 10,000 protesters gathered in St. Petersburg in March.
Four of the March 26 protesters were charged with alleged violence against the police, and one of these was sentenced to eight months in prison.
Another novelty of the recent rallies is that Navalny has attracted thousands of younger protesters, including schoolchildren and college students who have never attended protests before.
“This is the first free generation,” Satarov said. “They have grown up in conditions of freedom of information and freedom of movement.”
Apart from demonstrators’ disgruntlement with Putin’s heavy-handed rule, the protests have been fueled by Russia’s ongoing economic recession.
NOT DIMON
The rallies were triggered by “He is not Dimon to you” – a film by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation that exposes the alleged corruption of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who denies it. Dimon is an informal form of the name “Dmitry.”
According to the film, several charities and offshore firms linked to Medvedev and his associates own palaces and luxury estates in the upscale Rublyovka district of Moscow Oblast, in the city of Plyos in Ivanovo Oblast, in the ski resort of Krasnaya Polyana on the Black Sea coast, in Medvedev’s ancestors’ home village in Kursk Oblast, and in St. Petersburg.
They also own two luxury yachts, as well as vineyards in Russia’s Krasnodar Oblast in addition to vineyards and a castle in the Italian province of Toscana, according to the film.
The purchases were funded by Russian oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Leonid Mikhelson, as well as by Gazprombank, which is co-owned by state-controlled gas giant Gazprom, the foundation said.
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
Navalny launched his presidential campaign in 2016 and is currently opening his election headquarters in all major Russian cities. He needs to collect 300,000 signatures in his support to run for president.
As the campaign intensified, Kremlin supporters threw green dye at Navalny’s face in April, and he lost most of his eyesight in one eye. The incident has been compared to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s poisoning in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election.
The election date has been transferred to March 18, 2018 – a measure apparently intended to boost Putin’s support, because it is the day when Russia officially annexed Crimea.
The Kremlin is likely to register several “fake opposition” candidates in the 2018 election. In the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections, only Kremlin loyalists, including nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, communist Gennady Zyuganov and others, were allowed to run.
POLITICAL CASES
The authorities argue that Navalny cannot run for president because he has several criminal convictions, while Navalny’s lawyers say the ban on convicts running for president does not apply to people who have been given suspended sentences, as Navalny has.
Russian authorities sentenced Navalny to a five-year suspended sentence on embezzlement charges in 2013 and a three-and-a-half year suspended sentence on fraud and money laundering charges in 2014 in two fabricated cases with numerous procedural violations.
Later, the European Court of Human Rights forced Russia to repeal the embezzlement sentence, but he was re-tried and given the same sentence again in February.
Navalny’s brother Oleg was sent to prison for five years in the fraud case and effectively became Putin’s hostage in his standoff with Navalny.
PRIOR RECORD
Navalny’s Progress Party was not allowed to run in the 2016 parliamentary election because the Justice Ministry refused to register it. Putin’s United Russia and other Kremlin-loyal parties got all of the votes, with not a single opposition candidate being elected.
In 2013 Navalny also ran a strong campaign for mayor of Moscow, ending up as the runner-up with 27 percent of the vote.
Based on his statements, Navalny could be a more Ukraine-friendly president than Putin if elected.
Navalny’s position on the annexation of Crimea is ambiguous. He has recognized the illegal character of the annexation but called for a second referendum to determine the peninsula’s status.
However, Navalny has called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an “international crime.”
“Who started the war in Ukraine?” he said in 2015. “Putin and his inner circle. He did it to keep his monopoly on power and his exclusive right to enrich himself.”
