Good morning,
I’m writing only about Russia today, but I promise next newsletter will have more news headlines and stories.
JUSTICE in Russia has always been bent to the will of The Kremlin, especially when it comes to the Putin and anything political. As a long time news Correspondent based there, I saw the State use the illusion of law and order to lock up and jail Putin’s political opponents including Mikhail Khodorkovsky who arrested in 2003, served 10 years in prison before being released and fleeing the country. In fact that was the deal, go and your free but get out. His crime was allegedly fraud but his crime was clearly his attempt to fund opposition parties to contest elections against Putin. Numerous other Russians have had to flee including TV network owners, and businessmen who dabbled in politics and lost.
Then there were the ones who didn’t leave, like Boris Nemtsov, who campaigned against Putin and was gunned down in front of the Kremlin in 2015. A political assassination that has never been solved.
And there were journalists like Anna Politkovskaya who championed the cause of Chechen refugees, and questioned Putins war and for her diligent reporting was shot outside her Moscow apartment. I covered all those cases.
Usually the actions taken against Putins opponents are less bloody, such as using tax police to raid their businesses and shot them down or muscle in for a 50-60% interest. And fraud is always the charge to silence them and tie them up for years in legal cases which eventually ends with them either handing over their businesses or fleeing the country. London has lots of those tax police refugees from Russia. Or there are the Kompromat videos, like the one used to sully the reputation of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov or the sex tape of Yuri Skuratov. former Prosecutor General of Russia who was investigating then President Boris Yeltsin, and a guy named Putin was running Yeltsins security apparatus, and may have organized to silence an investigation of Yeltsin’s daughter. (Notable the allegation of a tape of Donald Trump in Moscow, has still not been disproven).
You get the point, that the charges against Alexei Navalny are all suspect and they of course include numerous fraud allegations to discredit him and break him financially and keep him in jail where he is now. But, this case in Moscow which unfolded in a kangaroo court was about something more transparent. Navalny left Russia in August on a stretcher because he was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent. He was in a coma as he noted yesterday, so how in the world could he report to the penitentiary service for a suspended fraud sentence? Even President Putin, who publicly boasted he let Navalny’s wife fly him out of the country , knew where he was.
Navalny said in court “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: It’s about putting me in jail because of a trial that was ruled to be unlawful. ... We know why this is happening. The reason: The hatred and fear of one man in a bunker. Because I offended him by surviving after they tried to kill me on his orders,” using a term he frequently uses to refer to Putin. “No matter how much [Putin] tries to pose as a geopolitician, his main resentment toward me is that he will go down in history as a poisoner.”
Navalny is so damn courageous, ask yourself would you after being surviving a poisoning attempt go back to Russia and face years in prison? (His actual sentence is 2 and a half years but there are more charges pending with at least one involving another 10 year sentence.)
So why did Navalny go back to face ‘bent justice’ and Putins wrath especially after releasing a video exposing ‘Putin’s Billion Dollar Palace’ and the stolen money trail, and calling him a thief? Navalny is playing against all odds to topple Putin, and set Russia on fire igniting a new national political movement. Most Russia watchers think it’s a long shot because Putins grip on power is so vast and brutal surely one man can’t succeed can he? And Russians traditionally have traded off a lack of democracy and freedom for stability after the nasty 90’s and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Here’s an interesting fact, Navalny knows the country better than all the so called think tank experts who write about a Russia from afar, and some of them have never been there. Navalny has travelled it and organized and tapped into social media with astounding results. His corruption video has 100 million views. Does he know something we don’t abut the new generation and a new wave of discontent and dissent in Russia we may be under estimating?
I don’t think this man is willing to stay in prison forever and is betting his ongoing trials and imprisonment will ignite a political opposition movement that will rock the Kremlin and Putin’s Russia. It has only just started. And Putin who is suffering an extreme drop in popularity because of a stagnant economy, and a pandemic, and now clear evidence of corruption and even attempted murder, is going to face the test of his lifetime against Navalny. Putin is free, but in his own way cornered in the Kremlin with little room to manoeuvre, and Navalny and his opposition movement is not done. Jailing Navalny won’t silence him, but only serve to make him into an even bigger cause celebre for real justice and change.
On Back Story with Dana Lewis the link to growing dissent in Russia podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/russias-growing-dissent/id1512445640?i=1000506832996
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Have a good day everyone!