The attempted killing of a Kremlin critic
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, was seriously ill in hospital this week after collapsing on board a plane following a suspected poisoning. The 44-year-old anticorruption activist was taken ill during an internal flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow; his supporters said he may have ingested a toxin in a cup of tea he drank at the airport before take-off. The flight made an emergency landing and he was initially treated in the Russian city of Omsk, where doctors denied that he had been poisoned.
On Saturday Navalny, who is in a coma, was flown to Berlin after his wife pleaded with
Putin to allow him to be treated abroad. German doctors said initial tests indicated that he had indeed been poisoned, and let it be known that he was being treated with atropine – an antidote used on patients exposed to nerve agents such as Novichok. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
What the editorials said
Navalny is the most effective opposition leader Putin has ever faced, said The Washington Post. His online videos documenting corruption among Russia’s elite gain millions of views; protests he has organised have brought tens of thousands to the streets. Before he fell ill, he was campaigning in Siberia against Putin’s United Russia party. So while news of his suspected poisoning may have been shocking, it was hardly a surprise, said the FT. After all he has already been jailed 13 times for organising protests against Putin; was “nearly blinded” in one eye with an antiseptic dye in 2017; and suffered a mysterious “acute allergic reaction” in prison last year.
The Kremlin has used poison on plenty of its enemies in the past, said The New York Times. Former Russian spies Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal were both poisoned on UK soil (with polonium 210 and Novichok respectively), and ex-Ukrainian PM Viktor Yushchenko was once targeted with dioxin. True, there is no hard proof the Kremlin is responsible for the latest incident, but “there isn’t much benefit of the doubt left to give”.
What the commentators said
He has been “assaulted, sued and vilified as a dangerous agent of the West”, said Matthew Campbell in The Sunday Times. But Navalny – the only figure capable of leading “a mass uprising” in Russia – has always had a sense of humour. “The question people most frequently ask me is, ‘How come you’re still alive?’” he once joked to me. So video clips showing his agonised groans after his alleged poisoning “can not fail to have a chilling effect” on anyone thinking of joining his cause. Maybe so, said Tony Brenton in The Daily Telegraph; but it’s wrong to assume this was definitely the work of the Kremlin. Putin has enough problems at home already – not least the country’s sky-high Covid-19 infection rates and stagnant living standards. Unrest in Siberia over the removal of a popular governor has dragged on for weeks, and the ongoing pro-democracy protests in neighbouring Belarus are “the stuff of Kremlin nightmares”. Putin surely knows this is no time to make a martyr of his best-known opponent.
It’s a common misconception that Putin runs a “well-oiled” political machine, said Yana Gorokhovskaia in The Guardian. The reality is “much more dangerous”: the Kremlin has fostered a culture of impunity, allowing peripheral actors to take out opponents on its behalf. Its response to these episodes is well-rehearsed, said Ben Macintyre in The Times: a knowing smirk and a denial. This time, the Kremlin planted the theory that Navalny “drank or took something himself”. Russians have a word for this kind of lie: vranyo, meaning a statement that’s obviously untrue, but which goes unchallenged because of the power wielded by whoever made it. It’s a principle Putin uses freely to assert his power (witness the claim by the Salisbury poisoning suspects that they were merely visiting the city’s cathedral in 2018). To him, it is of secondary importance whether the targets of these plots and cover-ups live or die. What matters is the message: that every critic or perceived traitor is vulnerable – “anywhere, at any time”.
What next?
The German government this week appealed to Russia to carry out a “detailed and fully transparent” probe of the alleged poisoning, said the FT. Boris Johnson said Britain would also join “international efforts to ensure justice is done”. But the speaker of the Russian parliament countered by ordering a probe into whether the incident was a “provocation” by other countries seeking to fuel unrest in Russia.
German doctors say it’s too early to know if Navalny will have lasting health damage, but that there’s no “acute danger to his life”.