When Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny returned to Russia in January, he threw a glove at President Vladimir Putin’s authority.
It was a challenge to the world as Navalny – after surviving a nervous breakdown a few months earlier – flew to Moscow.
The Kremlin’s answer was clear. Navalny was quickly sentenced to more than two and a half years in prison in an internationally convicted trial as politically motivated. The unusually large protests in Russia that followed Navalny’s imprisonment were quickly and robustly suppressed as authorities deployed police on an unprecedented scale. Thousands were detained and hundreds were fined or sentenced to short prison terms. Police targeted Navalny’s allies with a raid bomb and new prosecutions, detaining most of them.
After two weekends of protests, which saw so many detainees, that Moscow’s prisons and courts briefly backed up, Navalny’s team canceled any other street protests until the summer.
Two months after Navalny’s return, the Kremlin successfully stifled protests and reasserted control. Navalny himself is now out of sight in a prison 60 miles east of Moscow. As the dust settles, the scale of the Navalny challenge itself is clear, but the last few weeks have also contained long-term signs that the Kremlin will not like.
This result affirmed Putin’s ability to maintain control, but also indicates an unpleasant future for the Kremlin, one in which it must increasingly rely on gross authoritarianism.
For the past two decades, Putin’s Kremlin has sought to maintain its power without resorting to empty repression, capable of relying on growing prosperity and securing control of Russia’s media and political institutions. But with polls showing support for Putin’s weakening among Russians, and there is no obvious way to revive a stagnant economy, it is clear that the period is over.
“I think both sides are probably disappointed with the outcome,” said Sam Greene, a policy professor at Kings College London. “There is more opposition than the Kremlin wants to see and less opposition than Navalny and his team want to see.”
In many ways, the protests reaffirmed the power of Putin’s control. Although unusually large for Russia, involving tens of thousands of people, they were not huge. On the day Navalny was convicted, only a few thousand people came out to protest. Authorities must put unprecedented pressure on protesters, but it has an effect.
“What we don’t see, rightly, are enough people coming out to actually change the nature of Russian politics. Nothing sends a signal to the Kremlin or the elite that they can’t control the streets, “Greene said.
Independent polls show that, despite the drama, it had little impact on Russians’ attitudes toward Navalny and Putin. According to the independent poll, Levada Center, about 19% of Russians approve of Navalny’s actions, while 56% disapprove.
That is 6% more who disapprove than before Navalny returned. The same Levada poll shows that confidence for Navalny among Russians has increased slightly, from 3 to 4%.
The poll suggests the government has managed to control the narrative around Navalny, said the center’s deputy director, Denis Volkov.
State media described the protests as violent riots involving teenagers in particular. Immediately after his imprisonment, the authorities also tried Navalny for allegedly slandering an elderly World War II veteran. The sometimes bizarre trial, criticized by politically motivated rights groups, allowed state television to see Navalny as unpatriotic.
Much of Navalny’s success has been in using social media to avoid Kremlin control of the media. The best example is his recent film, which reveals a generous palace that was secretly built by Putin on the Black Sea. The film has now been watched on YouTube more than 100 million times. But Levada Center polls show that the film did not change most people’s views on Putin, but strengthened those already held.
Most Russians remain apathetic and deeply cynical about political change, cultivated attitudes and Kremlin propaganda, experts said, which is a huge challenge to Navalny’s efforts to mobilize them.
“Navalny paid an incredibly high price to raise his trust rating by just 1%,” wrote Andrey Kolesnikov, a senior senior at Moscow Carnegie Center.
But the protests also highlighted a much broader issue for the Kremlin.
In recent years, the approval of Putin and the authorities in general has eroded. Putin’s approval fell to its lowest level in a decade last year, reaching 59 percent in April last year, according to a survey by the Levada Center. “If we look at the situation objectively, I think that the much more serious problem than Navalny is the increase of social discontent,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, who leads the political consultancy R.Politik.
Many of those who joined the recent protests said they were there not because of Navalny, but because of dissatisfaction with Russia’s leadership.
Aware of its blatant approval – and alarmed by the example of the protests in Belarus – the Kremlin is no longer willing to tolerate the risk posed by the opposition, experts said. At the same time, he cares much less about his reputation in Western countries. The result is that Russia is rapidly becoming more authoritarian. In the last year, the Russian parliament has passed a barrage of new draconian laws that can punish critics even more to block civil society groups.
“It’s moving in a much bigger direction, I’d say, Chinese,” Greene said.
Navalny’s team is trying to exploit growing dissatisfaction with a tactical voting campaign aimed at undermining Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, which is far less popular than Putin himself. Called the “Smart Vote,” the campaign calls for people to vote for any candidate who has the best chance of defeating the United Russia candidate, regardless of their party. Navalny’s team publishes election guides that identify candidates who are often from the Russian Communist Party.
Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s closest aides, said the election was now the activists’ main goal.
“I never said there could be an event to overthrow Putin. That was never our plan, “Volkov told ABC News last month. “We have always said that we have a long-term strategy to build our organization. To attract more supporters. But this is a long road that can take many years. ”
Navalny’s team faces, however, a heightened challenge to impact the election results, several experts said. In addition to repressing the opposition and manipulating the field around the election, the Kremlin can also offer carrots before the election with promises of social benefits, they said.
“Gradual erosion to support the regime is underway, but it is very slow,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior senior at Carnegie Moscow Center. “It can be slowed down by the intelligent use of money to buy loyalty before important political events. And again, the regime knows all too well that most of the population is too passive to do anything significant to deal with the regime. ”