When Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny returned to Russia in January, he launched a challenge to the authority of President Vladimir Putin.
It was a challenge seen by the world when Navalny – having survived nerve agent poisoning months earlier – flew to Moscow.
The Kremlin’s response was blunt. Navalny was quickly sentenced to more than two and a half years in prison in an internationally convicted trial for being politically motivated. The unusually large protests in Russia that followed Navalny’s arrest were quickly and vigorously suppressed, as authorities placed the police on an unprecedented scale. Thousands were arrested and hundreds fined or sentenced to short prison terms. The police targeted Navalny’s allies with a barrage of raids and new criminal prosecutions, putting most of them in prison.
After two weeks of protests, which saw so many detainees that Moscow’s prisons and courts retreated briefly, Navalny’s team canceled any street protests until the summer.
Two months after Navalny’s return, the Kremlin successfully stifled the protests and resumed control. Navalny himself is now out of sight in a prison 60 miles east of Moscow. As the dust settles, the scale of Navalny’s own challenge becomes clear, but the past few weeks also contain long-term signs that the Kremlin will not like.
This result affirmed Putin’s ability to retain control, but it also points to an unattractive future for the Kremlin, where he will have to rely increasingly on crude authoritarianism.
For the past two decades, the Putin Kremlin has tried to maintain its power without resorting to naked repression and can count on increasing prosperity and ensuring its control over the Russian media and political institutions. But with polls showing support for Putin’s weakening among Russians and no obvious way to revive a stagnant economy, it is clear that this period is over.
“I think both sides are probably disappointed with the result,” said Sam Greene, professor of politics at Kings College London. “There is more opposition than the Kremlin wants and less opposition than Navalny and his team want.”
In many ways, the protests reaffirmed the strength of Putin’s control. Although exceptionally large for Russia, involving tens of thousands of people, they were not yet huge. On the day Navalny was convicted, only a few thousand people protested. Authorities are having to impose unprecedented pressure on protesters, but it is having an effect.
“What we’re not seeing, right, is enough people showing up to really change the nature of politics in Russia. There is nothing to send a signal to the Kremlin or the elite that they cannot control the streets, ”said Greene.
Independent research has shown that, despite the drama, there was little impact on Russians’ attitudes towards Navalny and Putin. According to independent researcher Levada Center, about 19% of Russians approve of Navalny’s actions, while 56% disapprove.
That’s 6% more that they disapprove of than before Navalny’s return. The same Levada surveys show that confidence in Navalny among Russians in general has increased slightly, from 3% to 4%.
The research suggests that the government has managed to control the narrative around Navalny, said the center’s deputy director, Denis Volkov.
State media portrayed the protests as violent unrest involving mainly teenagers. Immediately after his arrest, the authorities also put Navalny on trial for allegedly slandering an elderly World War II veteran. The sometimes bizarre trial, criticized by politically motivated human rights groups, allowed state television to paint Navalny as an anti-patriot.
Much of Navalny’s success was in using social media to circumvent the Kremlin’s control over the media. The best example is his recent film revealing a luxurious palace supposedly built secretly by Putin on the Black Sea. The film has been watched on YouTube more than 100 million times. But the Levada Center’s research showed that the film did not change most people’s view of Putin, instead reinforcing those already defended.
Most Russians remain apathetic and deeply cynical about political changes, attitudes also cultivated by Kremlin propaganda, experts say, which represents a major challenge to Navalny’s efforts to mobilize them.
“Navalny paid an unbelievably high price to increase his confidence index by just 1%,” recently wrote Andrey Kolesnikov, senior researcher at the Moscow Carnegie Center.
But the protests also highlighted a much broader problem for the Kremlin.
In recent years, the approval of Putin and the authorities in general has waned. Putin’s approval last year fell to its lowest level in a decade, reaching 59% last April, according to a survey by the Levada Center. “If we look at the situation objectively, I think the problem that is much more serious than Navalny is the growth of social discontent,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, who runs 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 leadership.
Aware of its weak approval – and alarmed by the example of the Belarus protests – the Kremlin is no longer willing to tolerate the risk posed by the opposition, experts said. At the same time, it cares much less about its reputation among Western countries. The result is that Russia is rapidly becoming more authoritarian. Last year, Russia’s parliament passed a flurry of new draconian laws that could punish criticism and further muzzle civil society groups.
“They are moving in a much more, I would say, Chinese direction,” said Greene.
Navalny’s team is trying to exploit growing dissatisfaction with a tactical voting campaign aimed at undermining Putin’s ruling United Russia party, which is much less popular than Putin himself. Named “Smart Voting”, the campaign asks people to vote for any candidate who has the best chance of defeating the United Russia candidate, regardless of his party. Navalny’s team publishes electoral guides identifying candidates, who are usually from the Communist Party of Russia.
Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s closest collaborators, said the elections are the main focus of activists now.
“We never said that there could be only one event to overthrow Putin. That was never our plan, ”Volkov told ABC News last month. “We have always said that we have a long-term strategy to build our organization. To attract more supporters. But this is a long way that can take many years. “
Navalny’s team, however, faces a major challenge to impact the election results, several experts said. In addition to repressing opposition and manipulating the countryside around the election, the Kremlin can also offer incentives to spend before the elections on promises of social benefits, they said.
“Gradual erosion through support for the regime is occurring, but it is very slow,” said Alexander Gabuev, senior researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “This can be slowed by the smart application of money to buy loyalty before major political events. And again, the regime knows very well that the majority of the population is too passive to do anything significant to confront the regime. “