©Reuters. A person holds flowers and a portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the monument to victims of political repressions after Navalny’s death, in St. Petersburg, Russia, February 16, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer
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By Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light
MOSCOW/TBILIZI (Reuters) – The death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny deprives opponents of President Vladimir Putin of their most formidable leader and the man who, for some, embodied the hope of a better future in Russia.
Russia’s prison service said Navalny, 47, collapsed and died Friday after a walk in an Arctic penal colony, a statement his allies and wife could not confirm.
Navalny had been by far the most prominent opposition leader since he rose to international prominence during the 2011 street protests, and some supporters believed he would eventually walk free and become Russia’s leader.
His death, if confirmed, would leave the scattered groups that oppose Putin without a figurehead, and without an obvious candidate seeking to turn discontent over his passing into mass protests.
“This death affects all of us,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “About an indifferent society. About reckless cruelty. About the loss of hope.”
“Now our supreme commander has no rivals: he is now the Solus Rex, the lone king,” he said.
Prosecutors have warned Russians against participating in any mass protests in Moscow.
Police watched as some Russians came to lay roses and carnations at a monument to victims of Soviet repression in the shadow of the former KGB headquarters on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square.
During a vigil in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, where many Navalny supporters have found refuge, hundreds of anti-Kremlin expats picketed the city’s closed Russian embassy.
Anastasia Panchenko, a former member of Navalny’s team in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, wiped away tears as she spoke about the man she hoped would become her president.
“We all believed that he was strong, that he would definitely face this (prison), that we would build a wonderful future for Russia, that he would become president, that everything would be fine,” she said.
AN ALTERNATIVE TO PUTIN
Although his approval ratings have lagged those of Putin, Navalny has offered some educated, urban Russians an alternative to the country’s veteran supreme leader.
The Russian opposition is in disarray as Putin prepares for elections in March that opposition groups call an “anointing” and will keep him in power until at least 2030.
Putin faces three other candidates whose task, opposition activists say, is to lose. Authorities have cracked down on what remains of Russia’s independent media.
Russian officials have called Navalny a criminal and extremist, a CIA puppet, who they say wants to sow chaos in an attempt to tear Russia apart and steal its vast resources.
Putin’s opponents are scattered throughout Europe and the United States. Those still in Russia are either in prison or so scared that they remain mostly silent.
“It is very difficult to see who else could fill Navalny’s role, however controversial he has been,” said Keir Giles, senior adviser on the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House in London.
“He was treated as a leading figure of the Russian opposition, and in the meantime, of course, President Putin and the central authorities of Russia worked very hard to ensure that no such figure emerged, with the kind of support that he had in Russia or with the Russian government. popularity abroad.”
“So no, there is no obvious candidate to replace that central figure as the representative of the Russian opposition,” Giles said.
PRISON ‘DANGEROUS’ FOR PUTIN’S ENEMIES
Navalny earned the admiration of Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he had been poisoned with a nerve agent.
“Navalny has emerged as a key and historic figure, embodying a firm anti-Putin political position and representing the most substantive alternative to the Putin regime since 2000,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, of political consultancy R.Politik.
He said Putin feared Western interference in Russia over the election, and that this would lead him to take a “more aggressive and more repressive approach towards any hostile demonstrations.”
“One by one the Russian state gets rid of its best men, gets rid of those who know how to tell the truth for power,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international relations at the New School in New York.
The opposition ranges from Western-oriented liberals to hard-line communists and radical nationalist or even monarchist supporters of a revived Russian empire.
Some opposition activists are concerned about two of Putin’s most prominent opponents: Ilya Yashin, who is serving an 8 1/2-year sentence for discrediting the armed forces, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is serving a 25-year sentence on charges of treason. .
Former Russian nationalist militia commander Igor Girkin, who accuses Putin and army leaders of failing in the war in Ukraine, was convicted by a Moscow court last month of inciting extremism and jailed for four years.
“We all already understood that places of detention can be dangerous to life and health,” Strelkov’s wife said. “Especially for those who are questionable to the system.”