When Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny returned to Russia in January, he threw a gauntlet on President Vladimir Putin’s authority.
It was a challenge watched by the world when Navalny – who had survived nerve poisoning months earlier – flew to Moscow.
The Kremlin’s response was blunt. Navalny was quickly sentenced to more than 2 1/2 years in prison in a trial internationally condemned as politically motivated. The unusually large protests in Russia after Navalny’s imprisonment were quickly and forcefully suppressed as the authorities deployed police on an unprecedented scale. Thousands were detained and hundreds were fined or given short prison terms. Police targeted Navalny’s allies with a barrage of raids and new criminal charges, trapping most of them.
After two weekends of protests, during which so many people were detained that Moscow prisons and courts received brief support, the Navalny team stopped all further street protests until the summer.
Two months after Navalny’s return, the Kremlin has successfully stifled protests and reaffirmed its scrutiny. Navalny herself is now out of sight in a prison 60 miles east of Moscow. Now that the dust has settled, the magnitude of the challenge Navalny itself is clear, but the past few weeks also include longer-term signals that will not please the Kremlin.
That result has confirmed Putin’s ability to maintain control, but it also points to an unattractive future for the Kremlin, one where it must rely increasingly on crude authoritarianism.
For the past two decades, the Putin Kremlin has sought to maintain its power without resorting to naked repression, able to rely on growing prosperity and by ensuring its control over the Russian media and political institutions. But with polls among the Russians showing that Putin is weakening and there is no clear way to revive a stagnant economy, it is clear that this period is over.
“I think both sides are probably disappointed with the outcome,” said Sam Greene, professor of politics at Kings College London. “There is more opposition than the Kremlin wants to see and less opposition than Navalny and his team want to see.”
In many ways, the protests confirmed the strength of Putin’s control. While they were unusually large for Russia, involving tens of thousands of people, they still weren’t huge. On the day Navalny was sentenced, only a few thousand people came to protest. Authorities must put unprecedented pressure on protesters, but it is having an effect.
“What we don’t see is that enough people are coming out to actually change the nature of politics in Russia. There is nothing that sends a signal to the Kremlin or the elite that they cannot control the streets, ”Greene said.
Independent polls have shown that despite the drama, there has been little influence on the Russians’ attitude towards Navalny and Putin. According to the independent pollster, the Levada Center, about 19% of Russians approve of Navalny’s actions, while 56% disapprove.
That’s 6% more disapproving than before Navalny returned. The same Levada polls show that confidence in Navalny has risen slightly among Russians in general, from 3% to 4%.
The poll suggests the government has managed to control the narrative surrounding Navalny, the center’s deputy director, Denis Volkov said.
The state media has portrayed the protests as violent riots mainly attended by adolescents. Immediately after his capture, authorities also put Navalny on trial for allegedly defaming an elderly World War II veteran. The sometimes bizarre process, criticized by politically motivated rights groups, enabled state television to paint Navalny as unpatriotic.
Much of Navalny’s success has been in the use of social media to circumvent the Kremlin’s control over the media. The best example is his recent film about the unveiling of a sumptuous palace allegedly built in secret by Putin on the Black Sea. The film has now been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube. But Levada Center polls found that the film didn’t change most people’s views of Putin, but instead reinforced the already possessed.
The majority of Russians remain apathetic and deeply cynical about political change, an attitude also cultivated by Kremlin propaganda, experts said, posing a huge challenge to Navalny’s efforts to mobilize them.
“Navalny paid an incredibly high price to increase his trust score by just 1 percent,” Andrey Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Center, wrote recently.
But the protests have also highlighted a much bigger problem for the Kremlin.
In recent years, the approval of Putin and the authorities in general has been eroded. Putin’s approval last year fell to the lower level in a decade, reaching 59% in April last year, according to a Levada Center poll. “If we look at the situation objectively, I think the much more serious problem than Navalny is the growth of social discontent,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, who heads the political consultancy R. Politik.
Many of those who joined the recent protests said they were not there because of Navalny, but because of dissatisfaction with Russia’s direction.
Aware of its negative approval – and alarmed by the example of the Belarusian protests – the Kremlin is no longer willing to tolerate the risk of the opposition, experts said. At the same time, it cares much less about its reputation in western countries. As a result, Russia is rapidly becoming authoritarian. Over the past year, the Russian parliament has passed a barrage of draconian new laws that can punish criticism and further muzzle social groups.
“They’re moving in a lot more, I would say, Chinese direction,” Greene said.
The Navalny team is trying to exploit the growing discontent with a tactical voting campaign aimed at undermining Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, which is far less popular than Putin himself. Called “Smart Voting”, the campaign calls on people to vote for any candidate who has the best chance of beating United Russia’s candidate, regardless of party. Navalny’s team publishes election guides identifying the candidates, who often come from the Russian Communist Party.
Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s close associates, has said that the elections are now the main focus of the activists.
“We never said there could be only one event to overthrow Putin. This was never our plan, ”Volkov told ABC News last month. “We have always said we have a long-term strategy to build our organization. To attract more supporters. But this is a long road that can take many years. “
However, the Navalny team faces a major challenge in influencing election results, several experts said. In addition to suppressing the opposition and manipulating the field around the elections, the Kremlin can also still offer carrots by issuing promises of social benefits before the election, they said.
“The gradual erosion in support of the regime is underway, but it is moving very slowly,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It can be slowed down by using smart money to buy loyalty before historical political events. And again, the regime knows all too well that most of the population is too passive to do anything meaningful to confront the regime. “