Alexei Navalny: A threat to Putin‘s hegemony

On August 9, 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed as the Prime Minister of  Russian Federation during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, and after his death, Putin was sworn in as acting President; the following year, he won elections and was elected President.

Putin had to leave the Kremlin only once in the last 18 years, in 2018, when he won his fourth presidential term. The Russian constitution stipulates that no president may serve more than two consecutive terms, but it does not specify how many times a president may hold office. So, in 2008, Dmitry Medvedev became the head of state for the next four years, and Putin assumed the Premiership. 

Alexei Navalny, is a lawyer who has long been a Kremlin critic. He first gained notoriety in 2011 when he participated in an anti-Putin demonstration for which he was later imprisoned.

Following that, he launched his major plan to counter Putin by launching his first political party, People’s Alliance, which included many activists who opposed Putin.

However, because Putin and his United Russia party have such tight control over elections, whether local or federal, Alexei Navalny was unable to register his party, and after multiple attempts, he failed and his party was suspended on various charges.

Alexei Navalny’s rise must be linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin. To understand what led to Navalny’s popularity, we must first understand how Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia and the policies he implemented.

Putin worked for the Soviet Intelligence Service KGB and was an undercover spy in East Germany during the Soviet Union’s demise. For Putin, the collapse of the USSR was a major geopolitical disaster, with millions of Russians finding themselves outside of the new Russian state.

Russian elections are so tightly controlled by President Putin that no party can compete, let alone win. When he came to power, he wanted to remake Russia in the image of the KGB, making it as central, powerful, and secretive as possible.

To do so, he needed to control certain institutions, and the first thing he did was go after the oligarchy. In the post-Soviet era, oligarchs wielded enormous power, with the majority of wealth concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals.

This was the result of mass privatization following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin relied on these oligarchs for support, and once in power, he began to tighten his grip. Those who would favor Putin were rewarded and those who opposed were either jailed or killed.

Now oligarch under his control he went after the media, many independent media houses were raided, hundreds arrested and jailed for anti-Putin stance. Everything from federal to local news channels and newspapers was brought under state control. Anything that Putin could get his hands on was being attacked and there was hardly any independent media left.

In Russia, the main party is Putin’s “United Russia,” which has been a key player in governing election affairs. Elections are rigged from the start because no party is permitted to run against Putin’s United Russia. If parties exist, they are mostly handpicked by Putin for the sake of elections.

When Navalny decided to run for office, he wanted to do so through e-democracy as the mainstream was already rigged. During the election, he urged all of his supporters to vote for only one opposition party, despite the fact that it was backed by Putin and only ran a dummy candidate, which allowed Navalny to garner massive support.

Alexei Navalny’s prominence came through due to his anti-corruption activities. The entire Russian state under Putin has been so badly affected by the corruption that it has become a foundation stone of the regime. All that Putin does involved corruption and his regime has been sustained through this.

Media, oligarchy, Law, election, and judiciary have been plagued by corruption and it has been a structural feature of Putin’s regime. Navalny launched an Anti-corruption organization by the name FSK (Anti-corruption Foundation) and through it, he launched multiple operations and disclosed many dark secrets of the Russian state.

In 2010, Navalny showed that close to 500 billion USD have been lost due to corruption during the years between 2000-2008 and most of this money went to offshore accounts. $4 Billion were stolen out of the state-owned Transnet which later revealed by him through internal documents.

Many such corruption scandals were revealed by the documents which were related to land, oil companies, and state-owned industries. It was the first time that the Russian people came to know about corruption inside Russia on a massive scale.

When the leaks were out huge demonstrations were held across Russia in various cities and after that Navalny was arrested. This is all in the middle of the Russian economy in a bad condition and the value of the Ruble declining .

Alexei Navalny when returned from Germany was immediately arrested from the airport by the Russian authorities and was again charged and sentenced to prison. Navalny was in Siberia when he was campaigning for the presidential elections and after he was done there he went back to Moscow but during the flight, he was poisoned through a nerve agent Novochick.

This was the second time he was poisoned. After he collapsed on the plane he was taken to Germany for treatment and few days his health remained critical but recovered and returned to Russia within few weeks. His campaign against Putin which took off from 2010 through online posts and blogging and later spread like a fire through Russian had challenged Putin’s authority.

After Putin won the presidency in 2018 huge anti- Putin protests were seen in Moscow and many cities as allegations of voter fraud surrounded the elections. Putin’s popularity has been decreasing as the situation with the west is in shambles and with more international sanctions against Navalny arrest situation is only going to worse.