The Navalny Poisoning: dangers of daily life for Russian opposition

In recovery after a novichok poisoning, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the attack.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Opening your front door, waiting at a bus-stop, putting on perfume, drinking tea. These are all harmless everyday tasks for most of us, but for members of the Russian opposition, they provide a valid reason for fear. The Kremlin’s use of domestic settings and objects to poison its opponents has become somewhat of a trademark rather than a way of disguising its actions, having roots long before Putin came to power. Poisoning has become a tactic of intimidation, a sign of a government grasping for control in the face of increasing threat.

Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition figure, was poisoned on August 20 by Soviet-style nerve agent novichok, sending him into an 18-day coma. Residue of the nerve agent was found on a water bottle in Navalny’s hotel room in Tomsk, which suggests that he was poisoned while in the Siberian city, and not by drinking a cup of tea at the airport, as was previously assumed.

Navalny, 44, fell ill during the flight to Moscow, which was then diverted to Omsk, where he was admitted to hospital. 

It was only after direct complaints to the government from his wife Julia, along with offers of asylum by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, that Navalny was sent for specialist treatment at Charité Hospital in Berlin. His departure was delayed by two days as doctors at the Omsk hospital insisted he was too ill to move. On September 23, after 24 days in intensive care, he was discharged from hospital and is now intending to return to Russia.

The incident raised suspicions that the Russian government is responsible for the poisoning: German doctors discovered novichok in Navalny’s system, a nerve agent developed by Soviet scientists of which Russia is the only country in possession. Furthermore, it is alleged that Navalny was under government surveillance during his trip to Siberia before the poisoning. Despite these claims, Russia continues to deny any responsibility, Putin even suggesting Navalny might have administered the nerve agent himself, adding to the confusion of contradictory stories coming from Russia.

This is not anything new; the Navalny poisoning follows a century-long trend. In 1921, Vladimir Lenin founded Moscow’s secret poisons laboratory. But rather than concealing the culprit of the poisonings, the restricted nature of the laboratory now means that the unique nerve agents immediately point to Russia’s involvement. 

During the Cold War, multiple opposition members were killed, Ukranian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who was poisoned in 1959 by a cyanide spray pistol hidden in a newspaper. In 1979, Buglarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was killed in London using a poison-tipped umbrella. 

Under Boris Yeltsin, and during improved relations with the West, the killings stopped. However, during Putin’s leadership the trend has continued, with seven opposition figures being poisoned in the duration of his leadership, one of the most notable examples being the 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attacks on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.

Given this historical precedent, it can be argued that despite constant denial, Russian involvement was intended to be known, so that it can act as a warning message to both internal opposition members and the West. The poisoning itself, especially using this nerve agent, constitutes a trademark of the Kremlin which the world is meant to be aware of.

Putin is playing a dangerous game by asserting his power in this way. It is an act of a leader in fear, who can see his control slipping away. The recent protests in Belarus are part of the reason for this. After Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have won the 2020 presidential election by more than 80 per cent, the public turned out in hundreds of thousands to protest the result they believe to have been fabricated. They have been faced with brutal police force, involving use of rubber bullets and beatings, leaving many were arrested, injured or dead. 

Last week, protests gained momentum as Lukashenko was secretly sworn in as president. His opponent in the election, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, pledged in her presidential campaign to instate free and fair elections. After losing the allegedly rigged election and being threatened by the government, she has fled to neighbouring Lithuania. Lukashenko, who is often described as "Europe’s last dictator", has been president of Belarus since 1994.

The events in neighbouring Belarus are not dissimilar from those in Russia itself. Putin, in power for 20 years, has introduced amendments to the constitution in July that would enable him to remain in power until 2035. 

There have even been anti-Kremlin protests taking place in Khabarovsk, in the far-east of Russia, after their democratically-elected governor Sergei Furgal was arrested and replaced. As the autocratic rulers of both countries are grasping onto past glory, the protests in Belarus could easily tip Russia over the edge into similar uprisings.

With this in mind, it is obvious to some why now is the time Putin has decided to rid himself of Navalny’s opposition. His previous tactic has merely been to pretend Navalny doesn’t exist, going as far as to avoid saying his name in public, even when he is forced to discuss him, referring to him as “this gentleman” instead. 

Navalny has been fuelling the opposition for a long time, making investigative anti-corruption documentaries on YouTube. In 2011, he encouraged the Bolotnaya Square protests, attended by 100,000 people demanding a rerun of parliamentary elections that were allegedly rigged in favour of Putin’s United Russia. His investigative documentary about then Prime Minister Dmitry Mdevedev led to more protests in 2017.

Navalny, who was himself rejected from running for president by the Central Election Commission in 2018, later organised boycotts of presidential elections as well as of this year’s vote on constitutional amendments. It seems almost unbelievable that he had not been poisoned until now. His ally Boris Nemstov was shot in 2015, yet still Navalny has survived.

Now, Putin feels the danger of Belarus’s uprising being reflected in Russia, and Navalny would undoubtedly be the most fitting leader of such protests. The poisoning is a dangerous move, one that could easily provoke opposition rather than intimidating it into submission. It may achieve its aim of exerting power in the short-term, but this autocracy lacks permanency or longevity, relying on the same tactics as those of Russian rulers one hundred years ago. 

As Navalny realises, rigging elections is only successful with a low voter turnout. He employed ‘smart voting’, in the local elections on September 13, calling for the electorate to unite in voting for the most likely candidate to defeat United Russia, a tactic becoming increasingly necessary even in western democracies. Voter turnout increased, and United Russia lost a tenth of its seats. It is very telling that he was poisoned before his campaign could be fully enacted. 

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