Putin walks a fine line on challenges to his rule
Opposition candidate calls for a second wave of street protests
Less than a year before Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks re-election, the biggest protest wave in five years is putting his popularity — and his control over dissent — to the test.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who announced last year that he would run for president in March 2018, led tens of thousands of protesters into the streets in 80 cities across Russia on March 26. They demanded answers about corruption that Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation said surrounds Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin protégé.
On Wednesday, Navalny announced another protest scheduled for June 12.
Police cracked down on the protesters, jailed Navalny for 15 days and fined him for organizing an unsanctioned rally. They also raided Navalny’s foundation, confiscating its computers and placing its members under house arrest. More than 1,000 people were arrested across the country, and authorities launched a criminal case into the protests.
Police released the opposition leader Monday, suggesting the Kremlin is walking a line between neutralizing political challenges and carrying out mass repression.
“Navalny is not dangerous yet politically. But as soon as he crosses a ‘ red line,’ then the government won’t play around and will jail him pretty quickly,” said Alexey Chesnakov, a former Kremlin official who heads the Center for Current Politics. “Only the government knows what that ‘red line’ is.”
Critics say last month’s protests frightened Putin’s government, which has stifled media and individual expressions that do not treat him positively and tightened oversight of foreign organizations that might be promoting an anti-Putin agenda.
“When thousands turned out to the street protests, we were suddenly surrounded by a whole army of interior troops and the National Guard,” said Yegor Besstuzhev, 18, a student who took part in the demonstrations. “Just walking down the street, it became clear to me that the government is really afraid of us.”
“Of course they were scared,” said Leonid Volkov, head of Navalny’s campaign staff. “They are trying to gain time to see if things settle down.”
Before releasing Navalny, police transferred him from a jail that had attracted a crowd of journalists to one far away. Then he was let go, a move that suggests the government is afraid Navalny is getting too much publicity, Volkov said. A poll by the non-profit Levada Center showed public awareness of Navalny was 55% in March, up from 25% in March 2012.
Putin faced a wave of protests before his election to a third presidential term in 2012, when he saw his approval ratings take a nose dive. At the time, the government jailed dozens and adopted laws limiting dissent. More recently, hundreds of bloggers have been prosecuted for posts on social media that the authorities declared “extremist.”
Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea province and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 triggered a surge in Putin’s popularity. Since then, his approval has remained above 80% — it was 81% in a Gallup poll in March— despite economic stagnation, low oil prices and sanctions imposed by the West over his incursion into Ukraine.
Putin has been evasive about re-election plans, but Russians widely assume he will run and win the 2018 election, which analysts describe as more a referendum on his rule than a competitive race.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny “is not dangerous yet politically. But as soon as he crosses a ‘red line,’ then (the Kremlin) won’t play around.” Alexey Chesnakov, the Center for Current Politics