Analysis-The Kremlin saw off Navalny – what now for Russia’s opposition?

LONDON (Reuters) – On the night he celebrated extending his rule to at least 2030, Russian President Vladimir Putin did something very unusual: for the first time in memory, he spoke the name of Alexei Navalny in public.

Answering a U.S. broadcaster’s question after official results from Russia’s election gave him a landslide victory on Sunday, Putin described Navalny’s death in an Arctic penal colony last month as a “sad event”.

His comments outraged supporters of the late opposition leader, who called them cynical and despicable.

For as long as Navalny was alive, the Kremlin shunned any mention of him to make him seem politically irrelevant. Now that tactic is no longer needed. The challenge for Navalny’s movement is to show it remains a force without him.

Twice in less than five weeks since his death, it has proved it can still bring people out onto the streets – first for Navalny’s March 1 funeral in Moscow and then for an election day protest where people were urged to show up en masse at noon and vote against Putin or spoil ballot papers.

Thousands heeded the call in Moscow and other big cities. “We have proved to ourselves and others that Putin is not our president,” said Navalny’s widow Yulia, saluting those who took part after joining one such protest in Berlin on Sunday.

But across the whole of Russia, a country of 143 million people, the “Noon against Putin” event was relatively modest.

“People are still prepared to make these public symbolic gestures but the scale of it is just very limited,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a Russia specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The action provided a safe, legal way of “keeping the flame alive” for people who oppose Putin, and to show each other they were not alone, he said. But it paled in comparison with the kind of mass protests that convulsed Ukraine after elections in 2004 and Belarus in 2020, or with the big Moscow rallies against Putin in 2011-12.

Further demonstrations are not on the cards. The authorities have cracked down harshly on unauthorised gatherings, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine, and protesters could expect a much tougher police response than in the special circumstances of Navalny’s funeral and the day of the election, when people were queuing legally to cast votes.

LONG HAUL

Navalny was far from being the only significant opposition figure but the fact he survived a poisoning attempt, was treated abroad and still chose to return to Russia and face jail gave him a special stature for many. Other well-known Putin critics like former jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and ex-chess champion Garry Kasparov have lived outside Russia for years.

Now Navalny’s team is preparing for a long haul as Putin, 71, prepares to start his fifth term. In a YouTube video, Yulia Navalnaya urged people to adopt her husband’s formula of “15 minutes a day of fighting the regime”.

“Every day, spend at least these 15 minutes to write a couple of lines, talk to someone, convince someone and ultimately overcome your own fear. Don’t dismiss the work because it doesn’t immediately lead to results, but be patient and move forward. I definitely have enough patience,” she said.

The Kremlin’s line of attack is already clear – to exploit the fact Navalnaya is outside Russia as evidence she is out of touch. Pro-Kremlin media have also subjected her to personal smears over her appearance and actions since her husband’s death.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters this week she was an example of people losing their Russian roots and “ceasing to feel the pulse of their own country”.

Ivan Fomin, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis, said it was important for the opposition outside Russia to connect with “emergent opinion leaders” inside the country – for example with the increasingly vocal groups of wives and mothers demanding the return of mobilised soldiers from the front lines of the war in Ukraine.

The opposition needed to avoid being “isolated in their bubble in exile” and maintain connections with people still in Russia, he said.

Navalny’s former senior aide Leonid Volkov said the movement was trying “not to become like an emigre organisation” and staying focused on the domestic agenda rather than issues faced by Russians abroad, like the difficulty of opening bank accounts in the West.

“We invest a lot in staying relevant,” he said in an interview this month.

He said Navalny’s organisation, the Anti-Corruption Fund, has a staff of about 140 and is working on some 20 projects – including an investigation in which it aims to show that Navalny was murdered in prison, and to name his killers.

The Kremlin denies any state involvement in his death.

WHAT OPPOSITION?

Underlining the risks to opposition figures even beyond Russia’s borders, Volkov suffered a hammer attack in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, hours after he spoke to Reuters last week.

Even to speak of an “opposition” is hardly appropriate in today’s Russia, said Vladimir Kara-Murza, a historian, journalist and politician who is serving a 25-year sentence for treason but was able to send written answers for publication by independent news outlet Meduza.

Opposition is “a term from democratic life – the opposition sits in parliaments, takes part in elections, and speaks in television debates. All of Putin’s main opponents have either been killed or are in prison or abroad,” he said.

Asked what ordinary people could do in the current situation, Kara-Murza quoted from a 1974 paper by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a writer who spent years in Soviet labour camps. The article was entitled “Live not by lies”.

His answer highlighted what some analysts see as increasing parallels between Putin’s opponents today and the lonely dissidents who spoke out against Soviet repression, setting an example of hope to others despite the certain prospect of losing their careers and freedom.

“Re-read this (Solzhenitsyn) text, every word there is amazingly relevant today. Because despite all the differences, the regimes then and now have the same interconnected foundations – lies and violence,” Kara-Murza wrote.

He said Putin’s real fight was not with the opposition but with the future.

“It’s impossible to stop the future. Russia will definitely become a democracy, that ‘normal European country’ that Alexei Navalny liked to talk about.”

(Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)