What next for Putin? After Navalny’s death, many
fear what leader will move on to
With Ukraine retreating and western sanctions having
little impact, the Russian president is growing bolder and may embark on more
reckless moves
Pjotr Sauer
Sun 18 Feb
2024 17.31 GMT
Vladimir
Putin smiled and looked unusually festive on Friday as he praised factory
workers and joked with state reporters at an industrial plant in the Ural city
of Chelyabinsk.
Putin’s
confidence was unmistakable – a sign of his full belief that he would get away
with the death that day of his biggest critic in jail while outlasting Ukraine
on the battlefield.
The world
might never know what specifically happened on the day of Alexei Navalny’s
death at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle. As of Sunday, his family has
not yet even been allowed to see his body.
Navalny
spent years enduring some of the worst excesses of the Russian prison system.
The country’s penal colonies are notorious for their grim conditions and the
opposition leader was singled out for particularly cruel treatment.
Whatever
the circumstances of his death, years of mistreatment support the widespread
view held by his supporters that the Kremlin was responsible.
“Putin
killed Alexei Navalny,” said Georgy Alburov, a Navalny ally and a researcher
for his Anti-Corruption Foundation. “How exactly he did it will certainly be
exposed.”
Leaders
across the west similarly echoed Alburov’s view, laying the blame for Navalny’s
death directly at the feet of Putin. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for
Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible,” said the US president, Joe Biden.
But these
statements are likely to leave the Kremlin shrugging its shoulders at best.
Already a
wanted man after the international criminal court ruling charging him with
overseeing the abduction of Ukrainians, Putin has long stopped seeking the
approval of the west. As the Kremlin sees it, Putin is in the driving seat.
With the
death of Navalny, he has inflicted a devastating blow to the country’s already
suppressed opposition.
His control
over domestic politics now appears total. After next month’s elections, he will
be crowned for another six-year term as president, and his tenure could surpass
even that of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Putin has been in charge for 24
years so far, while Stalin died in 1953 after ruling for 29 years.
As the
second anniversary of Putin’s invasion nears, Ukraine is deprived of vital aid,
and cracks in morale are showing.
On
Saturday, Ukraine’s army was forced to retreat from Avdiivka, a key frontline
Ukrainian city, a decision that dealt Kyiv a military blow and handed the
initiative of the war firmly to Putin.
In the long
term, Donald Trump, who has yet to comment on Navalny’s death, has a real
chance of becoming the next US president, which could give Putin a carte
blanche in Ukraine and beyond.
The western
plan to isolate Putin and his country, to make him a pariah and to inflict
global sanctions that would cripple the Russian economy have not had their
desired result.
Putin has
cultivated new allies and courted the global south, receiving a grand welcome
in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, once staunch western allies.
Biden on
Friday was quick to admit that after Navalny’s death it would be hard to
inflict the “devastating” consequences on Russia he promised in 2021. “We’re
contemplating what else could be done,” Biden said.
This
hesitancy is only likely to bolster Putin’s confidence. “The more impunity
Putin has, the more aggressive he inevitably becomes,” said Boris Bondarev, a
former senior Russian career diplomat who defected from the Kremlin after the
start of the war in 2022.
“Having
destroyed opposition at home, he will focus then on those who dare speak
abroad,” Bondarev warned.
This mood
appears to be infectious among Putin’s allies. “Russia owes nothing to anyone –
let’s start there,” Margarita Simonyan, the head of state-controlled
broadcaster RT, wrote, commenting on Nato’s statement that Putin has “serious
questions to answer” over Navalny’s death.
Simonyan,
seemingly unfazed by the optics, continued by saying that five people who had
fallen “victim” to Navalny’s anti-corruption investigations had already called
her to celebrate his death.
After his
killing, many fear for what is to come. “With no checks on his capacity to make
fatal mistakes, an ageing Russian ruler surrounded by sycophants may embark on
more reckless moves in coming years than anything we’ve seen so far,” wrote
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
The
prominent Russian sociologist Greg Yudin put it more grimly: “In Russia, they
like to say that it is darkest before dawn. I think it’s true – it’s just that
we hardly know the real darkness yet. Looks like it’s only starting to get
dark. The sun is gone.”
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