The voice of the ongoing opposition in Russia has not been completely extinguished with the strange death of dissident Alexei Navalni. Although the Citizens' Initiative party failed to get its candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, permission to run against Vladimir Putin in the March elections, it did manage to attract the attention of hundreds of thousands of Russians and is now giving the Kremlin a run for its money your own system is another headache. “The death of Alexei Navalni is a political murder, regardless of the specific reasons for his death. “His imprisonment for political reasons and the numerous harassments bordering on torture to which he was subjected in the penal colonies led to his tragic end,” the group denounced in a strong statement, in which it banned the mandatory mention in accordance with Russian law repeated The dissident was “declared an extremist and terrorist by the Justice Department.”
The causes of Navalny's death are unclear. The newspaper Nóvaya Gazeta Europa, described by the Kremlin as an “undesirable organization,” has revealed some unconfirmed details about the events on the day of his death. According to a doctor from the emergency services of the hospital where the dissident's remains were taken, there were several bruises on his body. “I have a lot of experience and the way they were described to me, they caused seizures,” he said.
Likewise, a prisoner in the IK-3 prison in Jarp, where the dissident was held after his death, told the same media that the night before the event they forced all prisoners to lock themselves in their cells and “that there were many gave”. Riot.” in prison. According to their version, they learned of Navalni's death “at around 10 a.m.,” a few hours before the official version.
“We demand the immediate release of political prisoners and a radical reform of Russia’s judicial and penal system,” the citizens’ initiative demands in its message. The party with liberal tendencies, founded by post-Soviet Russia's first economy minister, Andrey Nechayev, maintained “political differences” with Navalni, although the two movements agreed that Russian citizens should vote for another alternative candidate to Putin to hold presidential elections from the 15th to the 17th and not to boycott them.
“I'm at a loss for words, I'm just crying,” the Citizens' Initiative candidate said this weekend when he learned of Navalni's death. “It's a shock. It's terrible. “My deepest condolences go to Yulia – the dissident’s wife – and the children,” added Nadezhdin, whose surprise nomination as an independent candidate mobilized Russians fed up with the Kremlin. The politician collected more than 200,000 signatures to take part in the elections, but the Central Election Commission rejected his application, saying that thousands of them allegedly had irregularities. However, the opposition believes it was a direct veto from the Kremlin, particularly from one of Putin's closest presidential advisers, statesman Sergei Kiriyenko.
“Many signatures were rejected due to discrepancies between the signatory’s passport details and the Home Office certificate. We contacted everyone to clarify the data and defend their signatures. “I do not agree with the election commission's refusal To me, and therefore I will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court,” Nadezhdin announced this Saturday on his candidacy website.
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Nadezhdin finds himself in a difficult situation. Any kind of protest, no matter how small, is swept up by police, and most politicians who disagreed with the Kremlin over the invasion of Ukraine have been thrown in prison. After Navalny's death, which many Russians consider a murder, all attention is focused on him, including Putin. “I have a plan B and a plan C,” the opponent told the independent newspaper Nastoyaschee Vremia a week ago. In any case, there will be no unauthorized demonstrations or Maidanes on my part. [en alusión a las protestas de Kiev de 2014 que acabaron con la huida del presidente VÃktor Yanukovich]†.
Neither Putin nor the Communist Party, the second largest formation in the State Duma, have yet commented on Navalny's death. Yes, the presidential candidate of the populist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Leonid Slutski, did so, accusing the West of exploiting the dissident's death against the Kremlin; and New People's candidate Vladislav Davankov. This last political party, founded in 2021 and which Putin allowed to run in the elections, has shown some moderation by negotiating some kind of cooperation with Nadezhdin and mourning the death of Navalny.
What is striking is the harshness of the statement in which the citizens' initiative denounces the “political murder” of the opponent. The Kremlin has tried to erase every symbol of protest these days. According to the OVD-Info organization, at least 366 people were arrested in 39 cities across the country while laying flowers at monuments to victims of political repression.
“I don't understand it, it's not even a demonstration, everyone comes here and is silent. “Why are they holding people?” complained a 28-year-old girl next to the Wall of Pain – Stena skorbi, in Russian – a 2017 by Monument dedicated to Putin, in which countless faceless human figures appear to be going to Hades after being sacrificed by Stalin. Hours later, late at night, several officers collected all the flowers and threw them in the trash under heavy snow and the resigned look of police guarding the site.
Nadezhdin's big challenge
“The declaration was a very courageous step. “Nadezhdin is in the country and it is very risky behavior,” renowned Russian political scientist Ekaterina Shulman tells EL PAÍS. “Before collecting signatures, he was on the political stage for almost 30 years, but he was not a figure who was in the foreground. “Now he is and his statements are attracting attention, he enjoys high visibility and potential influence,” he added in a phone conversation, warning that the risks posed by the enemy as long as he remained in the country were “very high.” .
Shulman points out that the Kremlin took note of the huge queues of citizens supporting Nadezhdin with their signatures and did not want to take any chances before the March elections if Nadezhdin was still alive. “I thought that after the elections the president's team would draw conclusions about what happened to Nadezhdin because I thought it was harmless and he received a wave of popular support in the end, but it is obvious that it has happened before.”
“Decision-making has completely passed into the hands of people who think only in terms of violence and have two prescriptions to solve any problem: open a criminal case or kill,” warns Shulman. “The authorities follow the principle of no man, no problem, and they thought they could not afford to take any risks before the elections because the mood of the population is volatile,” he adds, but warns that Social unrest can come from anywhere: “Dissatisfied people rush to look for alternatives, they use every opportunity to express in some way their dissatisfaction with what is happening.”
“Under these conditions, it is too dangerous to have a person who, even behind bars, can call on the population to behave in a certain way during elections.” It is better to scare them all so that they are paralyzed with fear. Then the elections will take place quietly. That is the Kremlin’s logic,” he emphasizes.
The political scientist insists not to make comparisons between Putin and Stalin. “[La URSS] It was a totalitarian regime that was building some kind of new future, but it didn't fit into that future and destroyed it. This is a kind of social engineering. “In Russia we are dealing with an authoritarian regime that seeks to maintain power and therefore acts through selective intimidation,” emphasizes Shulman.
“The repression has not stopped after two years of war, it has even intensified, but the persecution of the opposition for its political activities affects hundreds of people every year.” For a large country, this is selective repression. “That doesn’t make them better, but modern autocracies have neither the need nor the necessary resources to carry out massive repression,” he emphasizes, before pointing out the difference “to the USSR, Cambodia or Nazi Germany.” “There were certain social categories that had to be completely eradicated,” says the political scientist, emphasizing that “that was a certain stage in history that will not repeat itself.”
“Putin is just trying to stick to his goals. Therefore, the one who poses a threat is eliminated. That's all. It doesn’t have to transform society into something else,” Shulman concludes.
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