Secure in power despite protests
death last year after a Novichok poisoning, was jailed for two years and eight months for, the authorities said, not complying with a suspended sentence. Navalny argues it is simply a bid to silence him.
A film made by Navalny, Putin’s Palace, which shows an opulent billion dollar palace on the Black Sea said to be owned by Putin – which the leader denies – has been viewed 100 million times, but Roxburgh says Navalny’s influence among the Russian public can be overstated.
“According to an opinion poll, two thirds of Russians regard it as fake news,” he continued. “The west, for obvious reasons, latch on to whomever the opposition figure is, be it Kasparov, Nemtsov or Navalny. It’s not to belittle what he does, as he is incredibly courageous to have gone back to Russia after only just surviving the poisoning attempt, but the fact is a lot of Russians see him as a troublemaker or as fake news, or financed by the west, which is the story put out by the Russian state media.
“It’s the likes of lecturers and creatives who want change, but the vast majority of Russian people aren’t all that interested in politics. They just want to get on with their lives and have never felt they could influence the Kremlin. They’ve never had an experience of proper democracy. Even with the corruption, they just shrug their shoulders. There’s a lot of apathy.”
Putin’s strength lies, Roxburgh says, in the “coterie of oligarchs” surrounding him: “These are either mates from school and college or former KGB members. They have become phenomenally rich and corrupt.”
President Joe Biden is the latest foreign leader to be faced with the question of what to do with Putin. Roxburgh believes further sanctions are worthless. “The west has to work out what to do with him. They’ve pretty much given up on doing any deals with him, expelled him from the G8, he isn’t invited to conferences. They sit waiting from him to do something else awful, like interfering in elections abroad. That is his payback – he feels mistreated by the west.
“When he came to power he pleaded with leaders like Bush and Blair for a place at the top table, he seriously wooed them, and they were kind of taken in by it for a while, but now he feels spurned and it’s payback time.”