The Kremlin is trying to suppress Navalny’s influence, both in death and in life

When Aleksei A. Navalny was alive, the Kremlin tried to portray him as an insignificant figure unworthy of attention, even as Russian authorities vilified and attacked him with a ferocity that suggested the opposite.

At death, little seems to have changed.

President Vladimir V. Putin has not said a word publicly about Mr. Navalny in the two weeks since the opposition campaigner’s death at the age of 47 in an Arctic prison.

Russian state television was almost silent for a while. Reporting has been limited to a brief statement from prison authorities on the day of Mr. Navalny’s death, plus a few cursory television comments from state propagandists to deflect blame and tarnish his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who has announced that she will continue her husband’s practices. work.

And on Friday, as thousands of people gathered in the Russian capital for Mr. Navalny’s funeral and cheered his name, official Moscow pretended the commemoration was a non-event. The state news completely ignored it. Asked that morning whether the Kremlin could comment on Mr. Navalny as a political figure, Mr. Putin’s spokesman replied: “It cannot.”

Referring to Mr Navalny, Sam Greene, professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, said: “Part of the Kremlin’s approach was to give him no more oxygen than was absolutely necessary, or, if it was possible, to deny him at all oxygen.”

Mr Putin refused for years to say Mr Navalny’s name. State television almost never mentioned him. Authorities banned him from running for president in the 2018 elections and largely thwarted his participation in the Western democratic retail politics he wanted to see in Russia.

Greg Yudin, a Russian sociologist now a researcher at Princeton University, called the Kremlin’s strategy one of “strategic omission.”

By removing Mr Navalny from official public life, the Kremlin signaled that he was not a legitimate alternative politician, but rather an extremist, a terrorist or an enemy of the state, operating outside the bounds of the country’s orchestrated politics, it said Mr Yudin. .

“The way they create a perception of politics in Russia is that whatever is absent from the official discourse is irrelevant because it has no chance of becoming reality anyway,” Mr. Yudin said. “If you’re not talked about on TV, you don’t exist.”

At the same time, Russia’s coercive apparatus went after Mr. Navalny with increasing brutality, poisoning him with a nerve agent in 2020, imprisoning him in inhumane conditions and eventually sending him to a remote former gulag facility above the Arctic Circle. Along the way, he was vilified in a movie, attacked with green dye and subjected to a host of criminal cases, all while being demonized as a Western puppet.

“The Kremlin simply had nothing to gain from being mentioned on television, but that doesn’t mean Navalny couldn’t smolder in the undergrowth,” Professor Greene said. “And what they were concerned about was the spread of the fire.”

Even without the power of television, Navalny managed to make a name for himself in Russia via the Internet – and that remained the way millions of Russians followed news of his death and funeral.

Navalny’s online presence undermined Kremlin suggestions about his irrelevance. In 2021, he attracted more than 100 million viewers for his expose on a secret palace built for Putin on the Black Sea, leaving little doubt about the opposition leader’s latent power.

Mr. Navalny maintained his status as the face of the opposition even from prison, communicating through written messages that his team published as social media posts and through courtroom speeches that his team converted into YouTube videos.

Mr. Yudin, the Princeton sociologist, said: “Russian politics was long ago limited to a kind of standoff between two men, between Putin and Navalny.”

“That was absolutely clear to any honest observer of Russian politics,” he added.

But not according to Russian television.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, grandson of Stalin-era Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, briefly announced Mr. Navalny’s death on Russia’s flagship station, Channel One.

Mr. Nikonov, a pro-Kremlin member of Russia’s parliament, interrupted his political talk show to read out the prison authorities’ statement, saying that the cause of death, according to preliminary medical information, was a dislodged blood clot.

He quickly returned to praising the Russian military’s progress in Ukraine, quoting a famous war cry from his grandfather before turning the broadcast over to the news. There, Mr. Navalny’s death was buried as story No. 8 — after a segment about one of the state’s war correspondents personally delivering drones to Russian soldiers at the front.

In the hours and days that followed, Russian state channels covered Navalny’s death in only a few quick comments, while a few bizarre conspiracy theories emerged.

Margarita Simonyan, head of the state news network RT, said on a talk show that the timing of the death raised “big questions” because Mr. Navalny’s wife attended the annual security conference in Munich at the time and made a statement “without her mascara.” even running.”

“It shows me that this woman, at the very least, did not love her husband very much, but she did love power and all that that entails,” Ms. Simonyan said.

They and other propagandists suggested that the West staged Mr. Navalny’s death to overshadow the impact of Putin’s recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. They did not explain how the West could arrange Mr Navalny’s death while in Russian custody.

They argued that Navalny’s death was the last thing the Kremlin would want as it would give the West new impetus to put pressure on Russia.

“What better way to stir up accusatory pathos than the sudden death of the Kremlin’s leading critic, as the deceased was called in the European press?” asked state news commentator Dmitry Kiselyov on his show.

State television went silent after the first news cycle, allowing Navalny’s death and the unanswered questions about it to remain largely under the radar, even as his face stared out from the covers of newspapers and magazines around the world.

In a poll published Friday by the independent Levada Center, 21 percent of Russians said they had heard nothing about Mr. Navalny’s death, and another 54 percent said they had heard something, but only in vague terms.

In addition, Kremlin online trolls mobilized to increase criticism of Ms Navalnaya after she announced she would take over her husband’s mantle.

Research by Antibot4Navalny, a group of anonymous volunteers who monitor Russian troll activity, and the London-based democracy and technology nonprofit Reset, describes a coordinated campaign to smear her online, including by promoting doctored photos and making false accusations about ‘boyfriends.’

This approach by Russian authorities continued on Friday at Mr Navalny’s funeral.

State television almost completely ignored the event, while Kremlin-friendly online channels and social media accounts engaged in counter-messages aimed at Russian-speaking audiences.

The pro-government Telegram channel Readovka tried to cast doubt on the size of the crowd. It suggested that Mr Navalny was being used by the West as “jokes in English” were made by mourners.

Although Putin refuses to say Navalny’s name to avoid giving him status, the trolls “don’t have status” and so can’t give him a more prominent profile by mentioning him, said Abbas Gallyamov, a Kremlin speechwriter and political adviser has become. He rejected Moscow’s attempts to downplay Mr Navalny.

“Of course he was a threat,” said Mr. Gallyamov, who now lives in Israel. “Navalny was the only opposition politician who could get people out into the streets.”