While the most prominent Russian opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, awaits his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, thousands have gathered in frozen cities to protest the arrest of the Kremlin critic.
While Russian citizens from Moscow to icy Siberian cities came out in a rare outcry, Navalny’s allies called on the Biden government to punish individuals who “actively participate in the oppression and corruption of the Putin regime”.
In an open letter to President Biden, Navalny’s close ally and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Vladimir Ashurkov, lists 35 individuals divided into three groups: oligarchs aligned with Putin, human rights violators and those involved in the persecution of Navalny.
People participate in a protest against the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, January 31, 2021.
(AP)
“Sanctioning these individuals – freezing their assets, preventing them from entering the United States and doing business with American companies – would create a substantial cost for their actions and serve as an impediment to other members of the political and business elite. It would be a powerful way to encourage change, “says the letter.
Ashurkov, who has worked with Navalny for the past 10 years, says sanctions against these individuals are important for retaliating and deterring human rights violators. “Western countries encouraged Putin to be more assertive. If 10, 15 years ago, the United States had been less tolerant of corruption and placed obstacles to the flow of dirty money from Russia to the West, Putin would not have been bold enough to annex Crimea. and sponsoring separatists in eastern Ukraine, something that has killed more than 12,000 people in the past six years, “said Ashurkov.
Navalny survived poisoning by the nervous agent “Novichok” last summer – an accusation that the Russian government denies. He was arrested at Moscow airport on January 17 when he arrived from Germany, where he underwent intensive treatment against poisoning.
He now faces up to 3 ½ years of sentence for “breaking the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence in an embezzlement case”, the case that the European Court of Human Rights considered “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”.
Calls for Navalny to be released echoed from Russia’s icy streets to European capitals. According to a White House reading, Navalny’s poisoning – along with Ukraine’s sovereignty and interference in the 2020 election in the United States – was one of the main topics discussed between Presidents Biden and Putin on a phone call on January 26. . However, a reading released by the Kremlin did not mention Navalny.
Twice this week, hundreds of thousands protested Navalny’s arrest in Russia, including in Yakutia, where it is -50 C (-58 F). According to the local monitoring group OVD-Info, the riot police detained more than 4,000 protesters during the two protests, which Vladimir Putin compared to the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the Russian authorities’ use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists, saying: “We renew our call to Russia to release detainees for exercising their human rights, including Aleksey Navalny.”
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN RUSSIA?
In an exclusive interview with Fox News, the Kremlin critic in exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Putin is afraid.
“I have never seen Putin so lost and in self-defense,” said Khodorkovsky via Zoom from London.
The former oil tycoon is no stranger to Russia’s prison system. He spent a decade in custody. Khodorkovsky credits Navalny for an “incredible documentary that has severely damaged Putin’s reputation”. The documentary he is referring to? “Putin’s Palace. History of the biggest bribe in the world.” The film allegedly details Putin’s private residence on the Black Sea, which includes a casino, a cinema, an underground hockey rink and a hookah lounge inside a huge mansion. Putin denied ownership of the $ 1.35 billion property.
Where Khodorkovsky is from, Putin “doesn’t have much choice” about what to do next. “He cannot allow himself to turn a blind eye to Navalny. Because of his own environment – circles of control – they will think that he is weak, they will no longer see a man they served” and who, according to Khodorkovsky, will diminish his loyalty to Putin: “Putin can’t let that happen, that’s why he arrested Navalny”.
On Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Russia ranks 129th out of 180 countries and, according to recent approval ratings from Russia’s influential Levada-Center, 47% of Russians generally disapprove of the actions of the Russian government, others 2% have no answer and 51% approve of them.
Khodorkovsky recalls another voting form last March, when the Russian Duma passed a law on constitutional amendments, including an amendment on the redefinition of presidential terms, which allows Vladimir Putin to participate in the presidential elections after the end of his current term. When asked whether or not they would like to see Vladimir Putin as president of Russia after the end of his current presidential term in 2024, 40% of Russians said they “would not do it” and another 14% said it was “difficult to say”.
After 20 years as a leader in Russia and declining audience, Khodorkovsky says, Putin is afraid that people will come to the streets, because “he doesn’t know how to deal with such a scenario”.
WHAT IS THE NEXT?
Aleksey Navalny’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Khodorkovsky believes that giving Navalny freedom will further weaken Putin’s leadership among the control groups on which he depends.
“On the other hand, he is afraid of Western sanctions, including individual sanctions, because the sanctions target his own surroundings, individuals and families whose lives and well-being in the West depend on his ties to Putin”, which is why Khodorkovsky supports sanctioning corrupt individuals, “thieves”, not the Russian economy.
Khodorkovsky does not see a political will for sanctions in Europe, but he expects the Biden government to “behave politically” and demonstrate leadership in relation to Europe and the Euro-Atlantic world. “It happened in the Reagan administration, it can happen now”, he asks before ending the interview.