Navalny’s allies seek path forward
Keeping political momentum could prove challenging
VILNIUS, Lithuania — Alexei Navalny built Russia’s largest opposition force in his image, embodying a freer, fairer Russia for millions. His exiled team now faces the daunting task of steering his political movement without him since his death last month.
The movement has found a leader in Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has presented herself as the new face of the opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Navalnaya, 47, is aided by a close-knit team of her husband’s lieutenants, who took over running Navalny’s political network after his imprisonment in 2021.
Maintaining political momentum will be a challenge. Few dissident movements in modern history have managed to stay relevant, let alone take power, after the death of a leader who personified it. And so far, Navalny’s team has made little attempt to unite Russia’s fractured opposition groups and win new allies by adjusting its insular, tightly controlled ways.
A spokesperson for Navalny’s team, Kira Yarmysh, did not respond to questions or interview requests, nor did several of Navalny’s aides.
In their public statements, Navalny’s top aides have said their movement will have to change to continue confronting Putin without its leader, though it is unclear what the new strategy might be.
Even from prison, Navalny had “managed to support us, to infect us with optimism, to come up with projects, come up with cool political ideas,” Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief political organizer, said in a video published on social media last month. “Without Alexei, things will not be as before.”
But, Volkov added, he did “not have a concrete plan of action.”
Images of thousands of Russians who paid respect to Navalny at the cemetery last week despite the threat of repression have provided Navalnaya with political momentum. Her ability to channel this impulse into a lasting political force will be tested during Russia’s presidential elections this month.
Putin is all but certain to win his fifth term, for six years, in a vote that lacks real competitors. But to disrupt the government’s narrative of widespread support, Navalnaya has taken up an initiative first supported by her husband. It calls on voters to head to voting stations at noon Sunday , the last day of the three-day vote.
What voters choose to do once they are at the polls is less important, the initiative’s supporters say, than registering protest against a sham election with their mere presence.
“We can show that we are many and that we are strong,” Navalnaya said in a video published Wednesday.
By framing the initiative, called Midday Against Putin, as a tribute to Navalny, Navalnaya has presented herself as his political successor.
But staking the political capital of Navalny’s movement on a risky, hard-tomeasure expression of civil disobedience could also expose the limits of Navalnaya’s reach.
“If no one comes out, it will change my perception of the country,” said one of the initiative’s authors, Maxim Reznik, a former regional lawmaker from St. Petersburg living in exile. “Are people afraid to such an extent that this is now all so hopeless?”
After long shunning the public spotlight, Navalnaya has begun building her political persona in sharply produced, focused monologues presented in short YouTube videos, as well as through poignant public speeches to Western policymakers.
But she has avoided giving interviews to news media or going off-script in other public events.
She is supported by a team made up of Volkov and about four other people who were senior aides to Navalny. Most are in their 30s and spent years working with Navalny as he challenged the government.
After the government labeled Navalny’s movement extremist in 2021, his team moved operations to Vilnius, Lithuania, because of its proximity to Russia and physical safety. At least seven people who remained behind and had worked for Navalny as activists or lawyers have since been imprisoned in Russia.
In Vilnius, Navalny’s team has equipped offices, conference rooms and broadcast studios in a central office building as the headquarters of its political organization, the AntiCorruption Foundation.
The team oversees scores of researchers, activists and media professionals who promote diverse political initiatives inside Russia, investigate corruption in the Russian government and broadcast YouTube videos that attract millions of viewers in Russia every month. The movement also claims to have thousands of underground volunteers inside Russia.
In Vilnius, Navalny’s supporters have largely isolated themselves from a broader community of Russian dissidents who moved to the Lithuanian capital after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They have also maintained an arms-length relationship with the government of Lithuania, which staunchly opposes Putin but views citizens of Russia, a former occupying power, with a degree of suspicion, according to two Lithuanian officials who discussed policy on the condition of anonymity.
Navalny’s team has not asked the Lithuanian state for financial support, and it has kept its distance from the country’s security services, the officials said. They explained this posture as their desire to maintain their independence and protect themselves from the Russian government.
Navalny’s team does not disclose how it pays for its operations. Its last financial report, published in 2021, showed that their movement covered three-quarters of its expenses that year with money from individual donations.
To Navalny’s supporters, his aides’ emphasis on self-sufficiency stems from years of conducting politics in a repressive state bent on destroying them. They combined the latest internet technologies with shoe leather local activism, resulting in a movement that meshes elements of a tech startup with a 19th-century revolutionary cell.
But even some of their collaborators admit in private that the Navalny team’s insularity, confidence in their technical abilities and certainty in their course of action could cost them a unique opportunity to build a broader, more inclusive political movement that outlives its founder.
Navalny had long towered above the rest of the Russian opposition. He received 27% of the vote when he ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013, the only election in which he was allowed to participate. That result, his supporters say, was enough to cause the government to accelerate a campaign against Navalny, which culminated in his death in prison Feb. 16.