Navalny Back to Russia
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Warning: the term “opposition” — used in this article — is conventionally chosen to explain something non-western to the western public.
On Jan. 17, 2021, Putin critic Alexei Navalny went back to Russia after spending five months in Germany, one of which at Berlin's Charité hospital. In July 2020, doctors said that he was likely poisoned with a novichok nerve agent, a Soviet-era chemical weapon. It was obvious for Angela Merkel and the international community to call for detailed and transparent investigations and accountability. In Aug. 2020, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, announced that Putin saw no necessity to start investigations on Navalny’s sickness, and on Sept. 3, he rejected claims that Moscow was responsible for the poisoning. When we talk about “opposition” figures in Russia — such as Navalny and his supporters — it is needed to specify that western journals and journalists give an interpretation to something non-western. His aim has always been to bring to light Putin’s corruption and injustices made by the state.
It was not the first time of a political poisoning in which Vladimir Putin and his agents have been seen as central actors. A series of poisonings of Kremlin opponents have been reported for years.
Police officers detaining a Navalny supporter at Vnukovo Airport. (Sergey Ponomarev | The New York Times)
A former Russian spy who worked for the Federal Security Service (FSB), Litvinenko defected to Britain and became a journalist. Starting writing against the FSB and Putin, he became an enemy for the Kremlin. He was killed by radioactive polonium-210 put in his tea and died on Nov. 23, 2006.
In Dec. 2010, Kalashnikov, a former colonel in the Soviet KGB (Комитет государственной безопасности or the Committee for State Security) and his wife were reported to have 50 times more the safe level of mercury in their blood. Since the nineties, they worked as freelance dissident journalists publishing articles uncomfortable to the Kremlin.
Verzilov was a Russian-Canadian activist and spokesman of the rock group Pussy Riot. After having shown strong critics in a TV interview about Russia’s legal system, he was poisoned in Moscow in 2018.
In March 2018, Skripal, a 66-year-old former Russian spy, was found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury (UK). Later, he was revealed to have been poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok. Vladimir Putin denied any accusation and reported no information about the dynamics. However, in Oct. 2018, the Russian president branded Sergei Skriapl as a “traitor” and “scumbag” because the Russian spy cooperated with foreign intelligence.
What is surprising is not the hypothetical responsibility of the Kremlin and its agents for the act of poisoning, rather the unprecedented mass rallies and reactions to Navalny’s arrest on Jan. 17, 2021.
Back with his wife Yulia Navalnaya to Russia, he immediately told the reporters “I know that I am in the right and that all the criminal cases against me are fabricated.” Navalny was held at the police station in the town of Khimki, near Moscow, where a court hearing took place to decide his future. Kira Yarmysh — the spokeswoman of Navalny — was not notified about the session, and she expressed strong disappointment about the situation. The court postponed Navalny’s hearing from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2.
Demonstrators in St. Petersburg on Jan. 23, 2021 (Dmitri Lovetsky | AP)
Meanwhile, inside Vnukovo Airport hundreds of people waited for his arrival and the police started to arrest everyone expressing criticism of Putin. At least 68 people were detained the same day, but all of them were released shortly after.
In the end, Navalny’s flight was rerouted to Sheremetyevo International Airport where he has been taken into custody until Feb. 15.
Alexei Navalny was detained on the grounds that he violated the terms of his probation in the Yves Rocher case, while in Germany. In 2014, he and his brother Oleg were found guilty of money laundering stolen from some Russian companies associated with Yves Rocher, a French cosmetics brand. While Oleg was sentenced to three and half years in prison, Alexei was given a three-year probation sentence. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decried this verdict as unjust and unfair and it ordered the Kremlin to pay the two brothers compensation, but this has not happened.
On Jan. 21, the police in Moscow arrested Lyubov Sobol, a close figure of Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), who called for demonstrations on Saturday, Jan. 23. The FBK was established nine years ago to expose corruption in Russia and produced several detailed investigative videos on oligarchs, government officials and more. Since Putin extended state control over mass media — in more than 20 years in power —, Alexei Navalny was forced to shut down the organization promising to move to another legal entity.
Also on Jan. 21, the state censorship agency (Roskomnadzor) warned that social networks — TikTok and VKontakte — could face fines for spreading information and inciting the public to take part in unauthorized protests. Law enforcement officials started to show up at the home of opposition figures, activists — as Elizaveta Nesterova —, journalists and FBK’s staff members —as Oleg Stepanov — to warn that taking part in the rallies was prohibited and prosecutable.
Demonstrators clash with riot police in Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021. (Kirill Kudryavtsev | AFP via Getty Images)
Last Jan. 23, a huge amount of demonstrations took place both in the main Russian cities and in the smaller centers of rural areas. Announcements on Facebook reported the slogan “Freedom to Navalny!”. The rallies were planned for 12.00 p.m. (MSK), but the police cordoned off the streets and blocked all access to the main squares. At the end of the day, 40,000 people gathered to protest in Moscow and approximately 4,000 people were arrested. State-controlled TV, which usually ignored opposition events, gave attention to the rallies showing just one side of the coin, that was the demonstrators’ violence. Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, defined the protests as “triumph over fear” since there have never been such nationwide rallies as this time in Russia. He also claimed that they were fighting for the political majority and the protests demonstrated it.
Here is a video of clashes between police and protestors near Matrosskaya Tishina, a prison located in the Sokolniki District in Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021.
On Jan. 27, State investigators carried out 17 raids in the offices and homes of Navalny’s associates and the police made several arrests. The day after, the Moscow Regional Court refused to release the critic from pre-trial detention.
On Jan. 31, for the second consecutive weekend activists took to the streets of Russia, from Siberia to the Ural Mountains to St. Petersburg. The protesters, once again, demanded Navalny’s release, instead, the turnout resulted in several arrests. More than 5,600 people had been detained, though many of them were later released.
During the arrests, the security forces used electric shockers, gas and beat the demonstrators. Strong pressure was put on journalists, many of which were knocked down by police officers’ force. However, almost all the protesters interviewed by Meduza said they protested for low salaries, corruption and mistrust. They mentioned Navalny’s case as the straw that broke the camel’s back and gave them the courage to protest. The Interior Ministry predictably justified police violence as legal and needed to stem “aggressive and illegal actions”.
Finally, on Feb. 2, 2021, the Simonovsky District Court held a hearing on Alexei Navalny’s case at the Moscow City Court building. The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) — Russia’s federal prison authorities — sought to imprison Navalny under a sentence for violating the terms of the previous probation in the Yves Rocher case in 2006. According to the FSIN, Navalny broke the law 60 times also before moving to Berlin’s Charité hospital. The Court sentenced him to three years and six months in jail, but because of his previous 10 months spent under house arrest, the final sentence was two years and eight months of imprisonment.
The final decision represents a slap in the face to all protesters that rallied the last several weeks. A tool that would hypothetically protect people from human rights violations just came into effect by the European Union. Navalny’s arrest could prompt the inauguration of the EU Magnitsky Act approved Dec.12, 2020. The Act allows the EU to take measures and sanctions against individuals and organizations responsible for human rights abuses also outside EU borders. This Human Rights Sanctions Regime was modeled on the US Global Magnitsky Act adopted in 2016. It covered gross human rights violations as torture, crimes against humanity (CAH), extrajudicial killings, forced disappearance and others (Art.2(1)). The case of detention and attempted murder of Alexei Navalny by Russia fall within the category of human rights abuse. The main obstacle to the effectiveness of this regulation is the presence of Russian-friendly countries — Hungary, Malta and Cyprus — that could block the sanction list with their veto.
