The Navalny team’s strategy is to increase its reach and visibility while destroying Putin’s legitimacy through corruption investigations and election campaigns against the Kremlin. His allies say they will also call for more street protests.
“Our strategy is to be the most organized political force when things start to change,” Vladimir Ashurkov, one of Navalny’s main allies, said in a telephone interview from London. “We don’t know when this is going to happen.”
He said he had discussed plans with Navalny to ask for sanctions against Russian officials, state media figures and tycoons close to Putin – which Ashurkov did in a letter to President Biden last week.
“We have a plan for how we are going to organize our work and how we are going to constantly pressure the authorities for his release,” said Ashurkov of Navalny.
Navalny has repeatedly shamed Putin and his allies with investigative reports on corruption that have been viewed millions of times on YouTube. Authorities have already tried to contain Navalny with prison sentences of a few weeks to avoid turning him into a political martyr.
“We are entering a new period of instability and uncertainty,” said Ashurkov. “But nobody knows how close we are to the period for which we are preparing – when liberalization begins.”
Late at night after Navalny’s sentence, the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg resounded with sirens, screams from protesters and screams. On social media and independent media, the Russians expressed outrage at the harrowing scenes of police violence at night.
Police officers were filmed swinging batons against pro-Navalny protesters who had their hands raised, beat a journalist twice on the head and dragging people out of passing cars.
Authorities have made more than 10,000 arrests in recent weeks, according to OVD-Info, an activist group that tracks arrests in protests.
The harsh tactics against protesters by a large detachment of riot police and the uncompromising stance of top Russian officials and state media in portraying Navalny and his supporters as criminals, signaled that the Kremlin has moved to a tougher line against domestic dissent.
But there was no sign that the Kremlin would change course.
“There should be no unsanctioned protest activity,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday. “Unsanctioned protests are a cause for concern, confirming that the police are justified in their tough legal actions.”
Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Mr. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote in an Instagram post for opposition supporters: “Don’t panic and don’t get discouraged.”
Other members of the movement recognized that there is a long struggle ahead.
Ashurkov, Navalny’s main ally, said his team had long understood that Russia’s pro-democracy groups were too weak to force political changes on their own schedule. But he said he was confident that the change would come, with increasing dissatisfaction among the general public and the elite.
The authorities have made it clear that they will respond strongly. At least 1,408 protesters were arrested on Tuesday, including about 1,145 in Moscow, according to OVD-Info.
In what appeared to be a carefully choreographed operation, hundreds of riot police spread through the elegant Moscow city center even before Navalny’s sentence was announced and the opposition leader’s team called for protests. The police prevented a large crowd from forming and arrested protesters in courtyards and alleys before taking them to buses to take them away.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a non-resident academic at the Carnegie Moscow Center, described in a commentary the repression as the mark of a new phase in the Kremlin’s treatment of anti-Putin opposition.
In previous years, the Kremlin’s goal was to delegitimize opposition in the public eye and keep it out of official politics. Now, she said, it is being criminalized and considered a threat to national security.
At the same time, Putin’s critics are for the first time uniting around a single figure – Navalny.
“A moment of great confrontation has arrived,” wrote Stanovaya.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reports.