How Russian dissident and would-be opposition leader Alexey Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony last week will likely never be known to the world. But regardless of the precise cause of his death, it’s no mystery who killed him. President Joe Biden was right to place the blame for Navalny’s demise squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whether Navalny was assassinated outright or merely worn down from months and years of brutal treatment in prison, this was an act of murder by Putin’s regime. A more important question is: why now?
Navalny, 47, had been in state custody for more than three years, since he bravely returned to Russia after Putin’s first attempt to assassinate him with the Novichok nerve agent in 2020. He was unlikely to ever be released from prison, even if he had survived his 30-year sentence. In December, he was moved from a prison outside Moscow to the notorious IK-3 “Polar Wolf” penal colony, far above the Arctic circle, where Russia keeps its very worst criminals in horrifying conditions.
Putin could have gotten rid of him at any time. That it has finally happened speaks to the position of strength Putin clearly now believes he has. While some in Russia have braved arrest to mourn Navalny in public, there hasn’t been — and likely will not be — a major uprising in response to his death. If Putin was worried about political or diplomatic repercussions before, he clearly isn’t anymore. And why should he be? Everything seems to be going pretty well for him these days.
Consider the latest news from Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine: On Saturday, Ukrainian forces, worn down by a relentless Russian assault, finally withdrew from the strategically important frontline city of Avdiivka. It was Russia’s most significant victory on the battlefield since the capture of Bakhmut last May, and is an indication that the long stalemate is slowly turning in Moscow’s favor. Since October, Russia has been throwing wave after wave of soldiers into the meat grinder of the war, using its numerical advantages in manpower and munitions to chip away at the front line while Ukraine’s generals struggled with troop and ammunition shortages.
And help isn’t exactly on the way from Ukraine’s allies. In Washington, House Republicans continue to block efforts to pass a critical $60 billion Ukrainian aid package that Kyiv desperately needs to keep up the fight. Though Biden, in his response to Navalny’s death, slammed the lawmakers stonewalling the aid package and urged them to get their act together, House Speaker Mike Johnson remains in thrall to the small but influential band of radical right-wing isolationists who oppose sending any further aid to Ukraine, and he has so far been unwilling to even allow the bill to come to a vote. It’s not clear if Senate Republicans, who mostly support the aid, will be able to convince him otherwise.
European countries could theoretically fill this aid gap, but to do so they would need to double their current level and pace of arms assistance, and they have already been falling short of their existing commitments.
Putin is also getting an assist from former president Donald Trump, who raised eyebrows a week ago when he bragged that he once told another head of state that not only would he refuse to come to the assistance of NATO countries that were not meeting their defense spending targets, he would encourage Putin to attack them. If Trump takes back the White House, the odds of which are now about 50-50 at worst, it would spell the end of NATO as an effective counter to Russia’s irredentist ambitions and effectively give Putin free rein to terrorize eastern Europe. Even if Trump loses in November, by that point NATO members will have spent most of the year wondering whether or not they will be able to count on the U.S. in the future.
This uncertainty is in itself a weakness Putin can exploit to erode Ukraine’s resolve and discourage European countries from doubling down on their support for its defense. Russian troll farms have been working to undermine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy through propaganda and disinformation, sowing discord among leaders in Kyiv and attempting (so far unsuccessfully) to divide and destabilize Ukrainian society. Zelenskyy’s firing of general Valery Zaluzhny, his top military commander, last month, was one goal of this psyops campaign, and even if Zelenskyy took that decision independently of the influence of Russian disinformation, officials in Moscow still took it as a victory. Also, the State Department recently warned that Russia will likely conduct disinformation operations to turn European public opinion against Ukraine and influence the outcomes of elections across the continent this year.
Here in the U.S., Russian disinformation ops contributed to Trump’s victory in 2016 and have amplified his lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. And it remains to be seen how, not if, Putin will attempt to influence the outcome of the election this fall, both with disinformation efforts and by taking advantage of the assistance of useful idiots on the American right like Tucker Carlson.
Another of Putin’s recent flexes is the revelation that Russia may be developing a nuclear-powered anti-satellite space weapon that could knock out large numbers of satellites with a single electromagnetic pulse. Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, helped Putin advertise this potential capability last week when he put out a cryptic statement expressing dire concern over a “serious national security threat,” forcing the White House to both acknowledge that U.S. intelligence knows about the project and tamp down panic about its implications. Turner may have hoped that by publicizing this intelligence, he could encourage his colleagues in the House GOP to reconsider their implacable opposition to aiding Ukraine; if so, it doesn’t look like he’s succeeded.
Meanwhile, western sanctions meant to tank Russia’s economy and weaken its ability to prosecute the war in Ukraine have decidedly failed to do that. The Russian economy is growing, and it has found willing trade partners outside the western world, especially China and to a lesser extent India. Any hope that Putin would overextend himself in Ukraine, run out of materiel, and be blamed by Russians for inviting an economic catastrophe in the meantime has been lost. The war is taking a huge toll on Russia, with tens of thousands of soldiers dead and hundreds of thousands wounded, but these losses have not weakened Putin’s grip on power, and he will cruise to victory in elections next month, securing another six-year term.
With so many things going right for him, Putin has good reason to believe he is unstoppable. Alexey Navalny was one of the only serious rivals offering Russians a hopeful alternative to Putin’s rule, and his death comes at a moment when opposition in the country has been almost entirely silenced and potential challenges to Putin’s authority have been neutralized.
The irony of this situation is that Russia is, in fundamental ways, a weak state. It is almost entirely dependent on a senior power (China) to prop up its economy. It continues to pour unfathomable amounts of blood and treasure into a needless, potentially unwinnable war — and public support for that war is not as robust as Putin’s propaganda machine makes it out to be. Like all tyrants, Putin rules through fear and confusion, and such power bases are inevitably fragile. Killing Navalny may be a power move, but it is also a reminder that Putin still viewed this charismatic dissident as a threat, even while locked away.
Putin’s triumph is not inevitable. But stopping it depends on the unified resolve of democratic countries to stand up for their core values against a tyrant who seeks to undermine them everywhere. Not since before the Second World War has America’s commitment to these principles been as uncertain as it is today.
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Putin Is Winning — and He’s Flaunting It
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18.02.2024
How Russian dissident and would-be opposition leader Alexey Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony last week will likely never be known to the world. But regardless of the precise cause of his death, it’s no mystery who killed him. President Joe Biden was right to place the blame for Navalny’s demise squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whether Navalny was assassinated outright or merely worn down from months and years of brutal treatment in prison, this was an act of murder by Putin’s regime. A more important question is: why now?
Navalny, 47, had been in state custody for more than three years, since he bravely returned to Russia after Putin’s first attempt to assassinate him with the Novichok nerve agent in 2020. He was unlikely to ever be released from prison, even if he had survived his 30-year sentence. In December, he was moved from a prison outside Moscow to the notorious IK-3 “Polar Wolf” penal colony, far above the Arctic circle, where Russia keeps its very worst criminals in horrifying conditions.
Putin could have gotten rid of him at any time. That it has finally happened speaks to the position of strength Putin clearly now believes he has. While some in Russia have braved arrest to mourn Navalny in public, there hasn’t been — and likely will not be — a major uprising in response to his death. If Putin was worried about political or diplomatic repercussions before, he clearly isn’t anymore. And why should he be? Everything seems to be going pretty well for him these days.
Consider the latest news from Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine: On Saturday, Ukrainian forces, worn down by a relentless Russian assault, finally withdrew from the strategically important frontline city of Avdiivka. It was Russia’s most significant victory on the battlefield since the capture of Bakhmut last May, and is an indication that the long stalemate is slowly turning in Moscow’s favor. Since October, Russia has been throwing wave after wave of soldiers into the meat........
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