Kremlin could try to keep Navalny locked away for years
Since Alexei Navalny emerged as a top critic of Vladimir Putin more than a decade ago, the Kremlin has done its utmost to smother him: tying him up in courtrooms, locking him down under house arrest, and taking his brother as hostage by sentencing him to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
Finally, a decision appeared to have been taken to eliminate him when he was allegedly poisoned by Russia’s FSB spy agency. With that operation a failure and Navalny defying the Kremlin to return to Moscow, Putin’s dilemma remains what to do with one of his most stalwart and effective critics.
The Kremlin has always hesitated on one count: giving Navalny the kind of long, hard prison term that it has doled out to some opponents, like the decade-long sentence against oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky that became one of Putin’s most fateful decisions of the 2000s.
With his arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Sunday, the Kremlin could be poised to change its strategy and seek to sideline Navalny for good.
There was little doubt that Navalny, who survived the FSB poisoning attempt against his life last summer and then helped to expose the agents behind it, would be arrested soon after his return from Germany.
Moscow’s prison service said it has orders to detain him on sight for parole violations, potentially carrying a potential three and a half years in prison. And investigators said they were opening a fraud case that could carry a 10-year sentence. The mounting stakes have earned comparisons to Nelson Mandela.
But the question of what happens to Navalny now will depend on what Russian officials, some of them personally embarrassed by the opposition leader’s investigations, think they can get away with and not spark a public backlash.
“The first important political decision will concern how long he’s held in custody,” wrote Tatyana Stanovaya, the head of R-Politik, in a post this week. “The ideal solution is to keep Navalny in constant fear of being jailed for many years but probably without sentencing him for too long at once.”
The FSB and other hawks would be likely to push for the toughest measures, she said. But the potential for street protests among the young, techsavvy Russians with whom Navalny is popular could also play a role in shaping the discussion.
Mass protests have saved Navalny from prison before. In 2013, as Putin cracked down following demonstrations against election fraud and his return to the Kremlin, Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly embezzling money from a timber firm in the Russian region of Kirov.
But Navalny was let out on probation a day later after protesters surged on to the streets near the Kremlin, blocking traffic in an embarrassingincident less than a year before Russia was due to hold the Sochi Olympics. The turn of events confirmed what many already knew: Russian court decisions depend on political considerations.
Russia has changed since then. The Kremlin has less tolerance for opposition politics and the growing conflict with the west has left even less space for domestic opponents of Putin. And the decision taken to poison Navalny last summer would also indicate that the Kremlin is fed up with his investigations and campaign strategising in favour of United Russia’s opponents.
A protest backlash could affect Russia’s parliamentary elections later this year, but Putin has already achieved one of his most ambitious domestic goals: passing new constitutional amendments that will allow him to remain president until 2036. And while a high-profile prosecution is likely to bring new sanctions from the west, much of the Russian establishment already sees those relations as a lost cause.
The cold weather and anti-coronavirus measures may also help the Kremlin to tamp down on protests, which it can always outlaw by warning about the spread of Covid-19. For many reasons, the Kremlin may decide that the time to deal with Navalny is now.