Vitamin Therapy

Although I imagine he’s not watching much television these days, let alone America’s Sunday talkshows, Alexey Navalny would have heard a high-level US official speculate on his untimely demise had he tuned into CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend.

“We are looking at a variety of different costs that we would impose, and I’m not going to telegraph that publicly at this point,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, adding that the White House has “communicated that there will be consequences if Mr. Navalny dies.”

This threatens to further raise the temperature between Joe Biden and the Kremlin, just days after the US imposed fresh sanctions on Moscow in an effort to punish Vladimir Putin for a laundry list of malign activities including hacking and, for lack of a more diplomatic way to put it, poisoning folks.

Navalny is on hunger strike, and his doctor says he could die imminently. He stopped eating in an effort to get treatment for severe pain in his back and legs. Biden, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have all pressed Putin on Navalny over the last several weeks. On Monday, a commission of doctors determined it was best to move Navalny to a hospital. That’s according to the regional prison authority, which posted a statement on its website. They called Navalny’s condition “satisfactory.” Apparently, he’ll be starting vitamin therapy. With “his consent,” IFX claimed.

Consider this another “flashpoint.” I outlined several (here) late last week. It’s obvious Putin would rather Navalny just go ahead and die. But he missed his chance when Kremlin operatives botched an assassination last year. Now, the international community is following every twist and turn in the story. Put simply: There’s no way to kill him without infuriating Merkel, Macron, Boris Johnson and Biden, which is something Putin might not be particularly keen on right now with Ukraine tensions running high.

For all his bluster, Putin is not Xi. And Russia is not China. Putin can’t do whatever he wants with impunity. That’s not to say he can’t get away with quite a bit. Clearly he can. He restored Bashar al-Assad, for example. But if Xi “disappears” somebody, no matter how prominent, there’s little the west can do. Jack Ma turned out to be fine. But for about a month late last year, nobody knew where he was. His “crime” wasn’t leading any opposition. He merely chided regulators and suggested current policies (not just in China, but globally) might be stifling financial innovation. If he were in open rebellion against the Party, he’d still be missing. And he wouldn’t be coming back. And nobody would be able to do anything about it.

But, despite the threat of international consequences for Navalny’s plight, Putin is turning the screws. The Kremlin is pressing to have a foundation run by Navalny as well as his campaign labeled extremist organizations. That, in turn, chances criminal charges and possible prison sentences for his entire staff.

Forgive my callousness, but it’s not clear to me why anyone would choose this path for themselves. Putin’s grip on power is the furthest thing from tenuous. Resistance is wholly futile. Navalny should have stayed in Berlin, where he was treated last summer after agents gave him another kind of “vitamin therapy.”

Writing for The New Yorker last week, Masha Gessen, who knows infinitely more than I do about this, tried to explain Navalny’s persistence.

“Back in the days of the U.S.S.R., the pro-democracy dissident movement lived by the rule that, given the choice between prison and foreign exile, one should choose exile,” Gessen said, adding that,

Early in the Putin era, when some former dissidents were still around, they passed this wisdom on to members of the new opposition. The late dissident Yelena Bonner, for example, persuaded the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky to leave the country rather than risk arrest. The notion was that one could do more good alive abroad than dead at home. This argument rested on the assumption that the Soviet totalitarian state would last forever, or at least a very long time, and that the battle against it would be eternal.

Putin, who became prime minister in August, 1999, and President at the start of 2000, has held power longer than any Soviet leader except Stalin. Yet Navalny, who was fifteen years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, understands that Putinism will not last forever. During his arrest hearing in January, Navalny told the judge that she would likely outlive Putin, and go to prison for sanctioning Navalny’s arrest (the judge then reprimanded him). Navalny’s note to [the journalist Yevgenia Albats] makes clear that he is not certain he will live to see a post-Putin Russia. But he believes that Russia after Putin will be—or at least can be—a fundamentally different place.

Gessen also cited a letter penned by Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who sent a warning of sorts to the head of the colony where her husband is imprisoned.

“If the worst happens to Alexey, then you’ll have his death on your conscience,” she wrote. “And Putin will have it on his conscience, but your Putin will eat you alive and lay the blame on you, too.”