The sanctions against EU leaders, the persecution of Navalny, the squeeze against potential opponents. Putin is entrenched thinking about the upcoming elections, while organizing the meeting with Biden
“We will not be intimidated,” he said David Sassoli al Tg1, commenting on the Russian decision to add it to the list persona non grata. “Political move”, explained the president of the European Parliament, recalling that this will not change his positions “in favor of freedom of expression and thought and in defense of dissidents”, and this will not make him stop asking that the symbolic leader of the Russian dissidents, Alexei Navalny, is released from prison.
Navalny – poisoned this summer during what appears to have been one killing mission failure of Russian intelligence – has recently reappeared publicly. In court, to defend himself from the accusation (specious, political) of having defamed a veteran of the Second World War, he showed himself with a hollow, pale face. The result of a hunger strike interrupted a few days after weeks, which weakened his already tried physique.
On Thursday the judges informed him that they had rejected his appeal: he will remain in prison. And during this week the Russian judiciary also ordered the suspension of the activities of its network of activists (later decided by the closest collaborators of the Russian opponent) and made it known that in February another criminal case was opened against the organization. All pending classification as an “extremist organization”, a sentence that is practically inevitable at this point.
It’s a squeeze that has a reason: the Kremlin is closing ranks ahead of the parliamentary elections in September. Vladimir Putin has no political opposition in legislative assemblies, and hates the possibility that the extra-parliamentary movement that the figure of Navalny manages to catalyze could somehow institutionalize. The activist, blogger, rights lawyer, leader, is the only one apparently able to move the tired masses against the Putinian power that has indoctrinated them so far.
Putin’s is an aggressive defensive move. The sanctions against Western leaders, like the trials to gag the opposition, are valid as a method for entrenching oneself. He feels that after twenty years of power something is in danger of getting out of hand. And he chooses effective plays, to be propagated by his fanfares. Stress the situation: yesterday, while decisions against them were communicated to Sassoli and other EU leaders, the American Security Advisor was on the phone with Moscow, Jake Sullivan.
He was talking to his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, the second phone call in less than two weeks. On the same day Patrushev, interviewed by Interfax, he said that the US and the EU are “suppressing dissent” from those who do not want to recognize Western values as a universal example: a form of counter-narrative in defense of the limitations of rights. Sure storytelling, or perhaps better to say infowar, serve to alter the perception of what is happening, and their primary goal is to maintain a hold on the Russian community. In that interview, Patrushev talks about “Russophobia” as a historical Western sentiment, he refers to the unjust (he says) nickname “the Terrible” for Ivan IV, Tsar of all the Russias (Ivan the Terrible is one who said: “All sovereigns Russians are autocrats and no one has the right to criticize them, the monarch can exercise his will on the slaves that God has given him “). These are methods that serve to unleash Russian nationalism and take refuge around (Putin’s) power.
Moscow and Washington are at an all-time low (the US embassy in Russia has announced to reduce activities by 75 percent at least until May). But there is a meeting between Joe Biden and Putin to organize – this is linked to the Sullivan-Patrushev phone call. It will be in June, in a third country (European, Vienna has already proposed itself as a guest). The Kremlin wants to force anyone who wants relations with Russia to do so despite the various squeezes on internal freedoms. Putin announces that in his country it is done as he wants, and anyone who wants to talk to him must accept certain rules and certain narratives. It is an internal message from a leader who is looking for a hard punch not to lose power.