The Russian authorities made the opposition leader a new political martyr just before the presidential elections in March, writes Venäjän correspondent Heikki Heiskanen.
Heikki Heiskanen Correspondent for Russia
MOSCOW The long-awaited but still shocking news came in the evening at 14:19 Moscow time.
The penal colony located in the Yamalo-Nenetsk district announced that Alexei Navalny is dead.
Information is circulating in Russia that the opposition leader died of a blood clot.
It is no wonder that many in Russia and abroad doubt the explanations of the Russian prison authorities.
The reaction of the Russian opposition forces is clear: Navalnyi did not die, he was killed. It is known that the opposition leader was repeatedly kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time.
In Navalny, the Russian opposition lost its most visible character. It is inevitably a crushing blow.
Navalnyi was above all a symbol of resistance – a man who refused to be intimidated by those in power but stubbornly returned to the country after recovering from a failed poisoning attempt.
The Russian authorities can perhaps think that they suddenly have one less problem. Prosecutors no longer have to manufacture new and new lawsuits to keep Navalny behind bars.
The next few days will show whether death will raise sentiments, and if so, how. The Russian security apparatus is probably preparing to crush even the smallest expressions of opinion.
Those in power are probably counting on it, that there will be no big protests. Navalny’s organizations in Russia have been crushed and Navalny’s most important allies are either in exile or in prison.
The war of aggression in Ukraine has given the security authorities an even freer hand to suppress any kind of dissent.
Navalny’s death sends a message to Russian societythat in the last resort the rulers and authorities can do whatever they want to an individual.
Of course, this message has been heard many times before. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated in 2006, an opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in the year 2015.
Only the immediate perpetrators of these murders were brought to justice – never the person behind them.
Last August, the businessman who founded the Wagner mercenary company died in the explosion of his private plane Yevgeni Prigožinwho had defied Putin’s regime with his military rebellion in summer.
In Navalny’s case, there are no intermediate hands: He died in the care of the Russian authorities and in the place where they had placed him.
It’s hard to see how Navalny’s death fits For the Kremlin’s big script, when the country is being prepared for March’s important political show, the presidential election.
Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov told that the president Vladimir Putin was informed of Navalny’s death during a factory visit in Teljabinski. For Putin, Navalnyi was always a figure whose name he refused to say in public.
In March, Putin has to cement his fifth term in office with a landslide victory. There is no real competition in the elections, but they are needed to show that Putin is still the invincible popular favorite and that the people stand behind Putin’s war.
From prison, Navalnyi would hardly have been able to be greatly shocked by this great performance. The opposition that is genuinely opposed to the Kremlin is very often suppressed in Russia, and in exile it is torn apart by mutual disputes. Only safe counter-candidates have been admitted to the presidential elections in March. Wartime has given the authorities the opportunity to further tighten the screws.
In this situation, Navalny’s death gives the impression that the Russian rulers are no longer able to control themselves. Navalny’s death seems like an unnecessary display of cruelty.
Whatever the truth about death, it leaves its mark on the political agenda. It inevitably fades in the background when Vladimir Putin is celebrated for his fifth presidential term.