The Russian opposition has a new face. And Vladimir Putin a new nemesis. Ostensibly, anyway.
“I ask you to share my anger and hatred,” a severe-looking Yulia Navalnaya exhorted Monday, in what she described as an “appeal” to the world. Her nine-minute video was viewed nearly two million times in the three hours after it was posted to YouTube.
The message was more than a lament. It appeared to mark the official entry of Aleksei Navalny’s widow on the geopolitical stage. “Putin killed half of me,” she said. “But I have another half left and it’s telling me I have no right to give up.”
Whether Putin resolves to kill Navalnaya’s other half depends on how her struggle manifests. If “continuing the work of Aleksei” (as she put it) means little more than keeping a figurative candle lit to her late husband, the Kremlin may let it go. Navalny’s network isn’t exactly a powerhouse. More or less (and I lean towards less), it’s a personality cult comprised of young (or relatively young) activists. They’re notoriously averse to cooperating with other opposition elements, and an ungenerous observer might characterize the whole operation as little more than a publicity team for an inmate. And now the inmate’s dead.
It seems quite likely that Navalnaya’s decision to enter the fray was motivated at least in part by an almost complete lack of direction among Aleksei’s followers in the aftermath of his demise. It’s true that a dissident’s a dissident in Putin’s eyes, but the kind of deeply personal (almost familial) dynamics that characterized the Kremlin’s murderous struggle with the Boris Berezovsky circle in London simply aren’t in play here. That was Putin’s former political benefactor — the “original oligarch” and the “godfather of the Kremlin,” as one journalist famously described Berezovsky — waging a vain, bitter propaganda war funded by billions in post-Soviet smash-and-grab money from a wildly lavish, self-imposed exile in one of the world’s most expensive, prestigious capitals. All well-deserved plaudits for Navalny’s charisma and adeptness at organizing, cultivating and galvanizing starry-eyed youths aside, the core of his operation is just a group of thirtysomethings running makeshift newscasts and social media channels from forced exile in Lithuania. I’m not sure how seriously Putin takes that and to be brutally honest, if he took it serious, they’d all be dead.
But maybe Navalnaya’s “rage” (she used that word on Monday) will animate Navalny’s network and transform it into something it wasn’t previously. If she’s serious — where that might mean any number of things including, but not limited to, making more cameos at gatherings of international diplomats (she spoke at the Munich Security Conference last week and was scheduled to attend the EU foreign affairs council on Monday), contacting exiled former Russian government personnel and/or ex-spies, partnering with scorned oligarchs, actively fomenting domestic dissent or suggesting, earnestly, that she intends to run Russia at some indeterminate future date — she won’t be safe anywhere save, perhaps, America. And as Mikhail Lesin might testify had he not died of “acute ethanol intoxication,” even Washington D.C. itself isn’t necessarily beyond the Kremlin’s reach. Further, Putin isn’t averse to killing women, nor women with children. Anna Politkovskaya’s assassination stands as a stark reminder of that.
Obviously, I wish Navalnaya the best in whatever it is she’s planning to do. But I also hope she’s carefully weighed the consequences if her message to the world was more than an outpouring of furious grief. On Monday, she accused Putin of “daring to kill” Russia’s future.
“A free, peaceful, happy Russia — that’s what we need. I want to live in this Russia. I want our children to live in it. I want to build it with you,” she said. “I know it feels impossible but we have to come together with one strong fist and strike at this maddened regime — at Putin, at his friends and at his gangsters in uniform, at these thieves and killers who have crippled our country.”
As recently as 13 months ago, Navalnaya suggested she wasn’t interested in politics. “My understanding is that in order to become a politician, you have to want to do this,” she told Der Spiegel. “I don’t think this is an idea I want to play with.”
