An epoch of cowardice and cynicism

“A free, peaceful, happy Russia, a Beautiful Russia of the Future, which my husband dreamed of so much — that is what we need,” Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the murdered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said Monday morning. “I want to live in this Russia. I want our children to live in it,” Navalnaya said in a message broadcast to Navalny’s supporters. “I want to build it with you.”

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After joking and laughing during a court appearance where he appeared fit and healthy last Thursday, Navalny died mysteriously on Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was sent last December to serve out the remaining 27 years of a 30-year sentence for the crime of “extremism” among a variety of fabricated offences. He was 47.

Four years ago, Navalny was hospitalized in the Siberian city of Omsk. He had been poisoned, for the second time, and his supporters managed to have him airlifted out of Russia to Berlin, where German doctors concluded that he’d been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, a weapon Putin’s regime has used against its enemies several times.

In 2021, Navalny chose to return to Russia, risking his life and sacrificing his liberty in the fight for that “free, peaceful, happy Russia” Navalnaya spoke about on Monday. Navalny was arrested upon his arrival in Moscow, “a model of what civic courage can look like in a country that has very little of it,” as the writer Anne Applebaum put it.

The thing that is so striking about Navalny’s death is that it is the denouement of immense courage and optimism in an epoch of cowardice and cynicism that the liberal democracies can’t seem to find it within themselves to transcend. It’s a paralysis that allows Vladimir Putin’s gangland oligarchy of warlords and corrupt billionaires to persist in waging bloody war against the people of Ukraine.

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Against the backdrop of the Ukrainian catastrophe, the NATO countries, the G7 and the entire international democratic order remains riven by frivolous contests between “world stage” play-acting ritualists and the “populist” champions of spineless, isolationist parochialism.

It just so happened that the Munich Security Conference was underway, with its uselessly familiar agenda-stuffing and hand-wringing, when Russia’s prison service announced that Navalny was no longer alive. Something about “sudden death syndrome” at the Polar Wolf prison colony 1,900 kilometres northeast of Moscow in the Yamalo-Nenets region.

Yulia Navalnaya made a surprise appearance on the conference stage to address the assembled diplocrats and politicians just as U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris concluded a dull and unconvincing address in which she pretended to be certain about continued American reliability in Ukraine’s existential struggle. In recent polling, 41 per cent of Americans say the U.S. is doing “too much” to help Ukraine, and among Republicans it’s 62 per cent.

The contrast between Harris and Navalnaya could not have been sharper. At that moment, Navalnaya didn’t pretend to be even certain that her husband was dead, and she was also initially uncertain about whether she should even be there. “I thought,” she said, “should I stand here before you or should I go back to my children? And then I thought: what would Alexei have done in my place? And I’m sure that he would have been standing here on this stage.”

Meanwhile, back in Washington, where Joe Biden’s White House has been dribbing out too-little and too-late armaments to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s resistance from the beginning two years ago, House Republicans are blocking $60 billion in further security aid.

As a consequence, the Ukrainian Forces are running out of armaments and ammunition. Only days earlier they had been forced to retreat from the city of Avdiivka, which fell to Russia. It was the worst loss since Russian forces captured the city of Bakhmut, last May.

There are occasional bright spots. At Munich, Denmark pledged its “entire artillery” reserves to Ukraine. “They are asking us for ammunition now, artillery now,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. “From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery.”

So there was that, and the European Union is ramping up its defence-industry production in an effort to help Ukraine hold the line at least. But it’s American promises that count. This is an election year, and the Republicans’ likely candidate, Donald Trump, has lately disgraced the American legacy in NATO by suggesting that if he’s not satisfied with Europe’s defence commitments, and Moscow chooses to invade a European NATO ally, the Russians can do “whatever the hell they want” in Europe.

As for President Biden’s promises, three years ago in Geneva he promised Putin to his face that if Navalny died in prison, “devastating consequences” would be the result. At the news of Navalny’s death, Biden said this: “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.” While the details were not forthcoming from Moscow, Biden said: “What has happened to Navalny is even more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled.”

There was no talk of what the “consequences” might be, though, and Putin’s brutality proceeds apace across Russia, and so does his barbarism in Ukraine, while the democracies dither about whether or not to seize the $300 billion in Russian assets frozen by sanctions shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, two years ago this week.

With only $2.4 billion devoted to Ukraine’s defence so far, and Conservative voters increasingly turning away from Canada’s commitment to stand by Ukraine, Ottawa does deserve credit for leading an international effort to have those frozen assets seized and put to Ukraine’s disposal, if not immediately for the war effort, then at least for the purposes of reparations and Ukraine’s reconstruction. It remains a bridge too far for European bankers, however, who are skittish about the implications for investment-banking stability, the exchange value of the Euro, and lawsuits.

Meanwhile, across a poverty-stricken Russia, news of Navalny’s death brought mourners into the streets of cities from St Petersburg to towns and villages well east of the Urals. They left flowers at impromptu monuments, and offered up prayers for Navalny’s family. At least 400 people have been arrested for gathering in illegal assemblies.

Russia’s sham elections proceed next month. Putin, a former KGB official from the Soviet era, has already been in power since 1999. Needless to say, he is expected to win.

National Post

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19.02.2024

An epoch of cowardice and cynicism

“A free, peaceful, happy Russia, a Beautiful Russia of the Future, which my husband dreamed of so much — that is what we need,” Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the murdered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said Monday morning. “I want to live in this Russia. I want our children to live in it,” Navalnaya said in a message broadcast to Navalny’s supporters. “I want to build it with you.”

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

Don't have an account? Create Account

After joking and laughing during a court appearance where he appeared fit and healthy last Thursday, Navalny died mysteriously on Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was sent last December to serve out the remaining 27 years of a 30-year sentence for the crime of “extremism” among a variety of fabricated offences. He was 47.

Four years ago, Navalny was hospitalized in the Siberian city of Omsk. He had been poisoned, for the second time, and his supporters managed to have him airlifted out of Russia to Berlin, where German doctors concluded that he’d been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, a weapon Putin’s regime has used against its enemies several times.

In 2021, Navalny chose to return to Russia, risking his life and sacrificing his liberty in the fight for that “free, peaceful, happy Russia” Navalnaya spoke about on Monday. Navalny was arrested upon his arrival in Moscow, “a model of what civic courage can look like in a country that has very little of it,” as the writer Anne Applebaum put it.

The thing that is so striking about Navalny’s death is that it is the denouement of immense courage and optimism in an epoch of cowardice and cynicism that the liberal democracies can’t seem to find it within themselves to transcend. It’s a paralysis that allows Vladimir Putin’s gangland oligarchy of warlords and corrupt........

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