The European Parliament has awarded Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Navalny is unlikely to be able to attend the ceremony in person on December 15 in Strasbourg, since he is imprisoned. Is this a new serious signal to the Kremlin or compensation for the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not to Navalny, but to the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov?
Courage award
Alexey Navalny received his prize, first of all, as a fighter for democracy. Which is logical for a politician who has been striving for the return of free elections in Russia for many years. However, he was nominated by the European People’s Party, the largest faction of the European Parliament, with a broader wording: “For courage in the struggle for freedom, democracy and human rights.”
Ivan Preobrazhensky
And here, I think, the key word is “courage”. By this criterion, Navalny undoubtedly became one of the world leaders among politicians over the past year. And even before he returned to Russia and ended up behind bars, despite an attempt at poisoning and forced treatment in Germany. And this made an impression even on those in Europe, and there are quite a few who were worried about his previous contacts with nationalists.
By deciding to award the prize to Navalny, the European Parliament clearly showed that they understand that there are no free elections in Russia. If anyone still doubted this, he could be convinced of their absence in September 2021 during the election of the new composition of the lower house of the Russian parliament. So this decision is a far-reaching signal. After all, giving a prize to someone who fought for free elections is like declaring clearly: those who have been elected in Russia “on stumps” cannot be considered legitimate authorities.
So far, the European Union is talking about partial non-recognition of the results of the elections in Russia, mainly due to the fact that residents of the Crimea annexed in 2014 and voters from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, who were issued Russian passports under a simplified procedure, took part in them. But everything can come to a complete non-recognition of not only the election results, but also the legitimacy of specific politicians, as is happening in Belarus.
Not that premium?
The prize “For Freedom of Thought” was awarded to Alexei Navalny almost immediately after many of his supporters openly, and sometimes very sharply, demonstrated their disappointment with the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me remind you, he decided to give the peace prize not to the political oppositionist, but to the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, as a symbol of the struggle for freedom of speech in Russia. Navalny himself, it should be noted, congratulated the first Russian laureate (before that the prize was awarded in the Soviet period to Mikhail Gorbachev and Andrei Sakharov himself).
Perhaps these unfulfilled expectations and the ensuing disappointment should explain the rather sluggish, at least in social networks, reaction of Russians to the Russian oppositionist receiving, perhaps, the most prestigious European prize for the struggle for democracy. This was also obviously connected with the hopes that the Nobel Prize would help protect the life and health of Alexei Navalny. Hopes, as is known from world experience, are rather futile, since it is no secret that authoritarian regimes around the world are paying less and less attention to such symbolic decisions.
In the situation with Navalny, it is fundamentally important that the Russian authorities in the past year have tried in every way to delegitimize him as a freedom fighter. Suffice it to recall the information campaign that ended with Amnesty International’s short-term recall of the status of a “political prisoner” from the Russian oppositionist. Nobody is interested in a blogger, a prisoner serving time on an economic clause, a nationalist and chauvinist – that was the message carried by Russian propaganda.
But the Andrei Sakharov Prize unambiguously confirms that Navalny is a politician recognized in the West, and the Kremlin will have to reckon with this. Even if the Russian authorities do not release him from prison and under pressure from human rights defenders. And this is confirmed by the comments of world and European leaders, who, for example, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, bluntly say that the prize is a signal for the immediate release of Navalny.
Russia is one of the priorities
It is the almost simultaneous awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muratov and the Sakharov Prize to Navalny that tells us that the Russians, with their problems, their corrupt government that deprived them of free elections and freedom of speech, remain one of the priorities of the West.
It is sometimes said that everyone has long given up on Russia as some kind of Asian autocracy, only with nuclear missiles. The Kremlin, probably, at times, when they think more about sanctions than about “sovereign greatness”, would very much like this. So that Navalny and other dissidents are left face to face with the regime of Vladimir Putin.
But this is not the case. Now, apart from symbolic ones, there are few tools for putting pressure on the Kremlin. Nevertheless, Europe does not turn away from Russia, does not get hung up on its problems, but continues to consider it a part of the civilized world. This means, and support those Russians who are fighting for freedom and democracy.
Author: Ivan Preobrazhensky – Ph.D. in Political Science, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe, a columnist for a number of media outlets. Written a weekly column on DW. Ivan Preobrazhensky on Facebook: Ivan Preobrazhensky
The commentary expresses the personal opinion of the author. It may not coincide with the opinion of the Russian editorial staff and Deutsche Welle in general.
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