Alexei Navalny: Such bravery needs backing
Alexei Navalny’s decision to return to Russia from Berlin, having survived a suspected assassination attempt by state security agents, was an act of extraordinary bravery. On arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Sunday night, the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner told reporters that he fully expected to be allowed to go home. But given what happened in the summer, he will have known that there was every risk that this would not happen.
In a hastily convened court hearing, held in a police station, a judge ruled on Monday that Mr. Navalny would be kept in custody for 30 days. He is being held for allegedly breaching the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence, following a fraud conviction.
Rather than choose the safer option of exile in Germany, Mr. Navalny elected to continue the fight for democratic reform on Russian soil. At various points over the last decade or so, he has been badly beaten up while campaigning, nearly blinded in one eye following a chemical attack and regularly imprisoned. Still he came back from Berlin. In placing his arch-critic under lock and key, Vladimir Putin has shown boundless contempt for the civil rights of his citizens.
Worldwide condemnation of the Kremlin has been predictably swift. Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, described Mr. Navalny’s detention as “appalling.” Joe Biden’s incoming national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called for the perpetrators of the assassination attempt to be brought to justice. The German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, warned Moscow about its international obligations to the rule of law and the protection of civil rights. The question is what comes next.
Confronted yet again with Mr. Putin’s brutal determination to silence legitimate opposition, the west faces another bout of soulsearching. The Kremlin takes no notice whatsoever of moral lectures from foreign capitals, while targeted sanctions, such as those imposed in the wake of the Skripal affair, have had limited effect.
The timing, two days before the presidential inauguration in Washington, constitutes an early test for Mr. Biden. In the autumn, as Donald Trump resisted bipartisan calls to impose sanctions following Mr. Navalny’s poisoning, the president-elect pledged to work with allies to hold the Kremlin accountable for its actions. But those allies are themselves somewhat divided over how best to deal with Mr. Putin.
For its part, Britain has been talking a good foreign policy game post-Brexit. But there has been a reluctance to use powers such as those afforded by the Magnitsky Act to make life truly uncomfortable for Russian interests, or to clamp down on money laundering in London. Mr. Navalny has put his life on the line in the battle for Russian democracy. His predicament deserves a more vigorous response than the one that followed his near-death experience in the summer.