Why is the Russian opposition spending the winter planning its next moves

The opposition’s moves reflect another concern: trying to move forward as Navalny is out of the picture. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to more than two years in prison for violations of parole – charges that he and the international community said were politically motivated, and there are other cases pending that could lead to further imprisonment for Navalny, who returned to Russia last month after that. He is recovering in Germany from near-fatal August nerve gas poisoning in Siberia – an attack he blames on the Russian state. Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff who became the main voice in Operation Navalny during his stay abroad, said the Kremlin denies any connection to it. “ Not what Alexei wanted, ” Navalny’s supporters simply could not bear the punishment week after week of the security forces. “If we go out every week, thousands more will be arrested, hundreds more will be beaten,” Volkov said in a live broadcast on Navalny’s YouTube channel on February 5. The Russian crackdown afflicted Navalny’s inner circle, making it divided and temporarily weak. . Some key members are under house arrest in Moscow until March 23, and members of his regional offices have also been arrested. Volkov said that the continuation of the protests could also harm the goal of winning more opposition seats in the September elections. “The work of the regional headquarters will be paralyzed, and it will be impossible to work on the elections.” Volkov said, “This is not what Alexei wants from us. Some analysts said the move to suspend the protest marches showed that Navalny had learned from last year’s protests in Belarus: “Alexei asked us to focus on this fall,” when the State Duma elections will be held. After the elections, opposition groups – and many Western countries – said they were rigged in favor of old leader Alexander Lukashenko. But the movement steadily lost momentum and Lukashenko stayed in power, and this likely informed the Kremlin as well, if the Lukashenko regime had withstood the protests in Minsk, which had more than 200,000 people on the streets on some weekends, the government would The Russian was well equipped. Analysts said waiting for its unrest to end with much less participation in its two biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, Abbas Glyimov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst, wrote on Facebook that Volkov’s decision was the right strategy, but Galiamov wrote: “It was We must avoid the headlines: “Volkov announced that he refused to hold a rally next weekend, because it looks like it is backing down.” Oleg Kozlovsky, an Amnesty International researcher who previously worked at Navalny’s office, said in the Facebook Post that “the Kremlin opens champagne” when Volkov’s announcement, calling it “defeat.” Volkov announced on Tuesday a new protest initiative, which he said would still keep supporters safe: calling on Russians in major cities to stand outside their homes and raise their cell phone lights at 8 pm for 15 minutes. It seems to you that those 15 minutes will not change anything, he said in his Telegram messaging app, “But, in fact, they will change everything.” “There are many of us.” According to a recent poll conducted by the independent Levada Center, 45 percent of respondents said they expect political protests to erupt again – the highest indicator since 1998. But only 15 percent said they are ready to attend political rallies, a decrease of 4 points On the previous Levada poll on the November 2020 protests. Evgeny, a 27-year-old debut demonstrator from St. Petersburg, said he understood the decision to stop street gatherings at the moment because “it is winter and cold, so inviting people to go out every weekend will not work”. “ But it is not clear to me why after a week, Volkov suggested that everything goes out and does this thing with the electronic phone flashlights on February 14th, ” said Evgeny, adding that it contradicted the original goal of regrouping to focus on The fall elections… in the al-Misbah protest even if he is not a fan of this approach, and he said, “Now I think it is necessary to confirm this political position in any way possible.” “We need to come out just to show that we exist and that there are many of us.” Plan for elections before The Moscow city election two years ago, Navalny first advocated a system he called “smart voting” – to inform supporters of the candidates with the best chance of defeating rivals from Putin’s ruling United Russia party, which Navalny was promoting this tactic during an August trip to Siberia when he was poisoned. With nerve gas. Less than a month later, the smart vote showed again that it could be successful. In the two cities Navalny visited, Tomsk and Novosibirsk, United Russia lost a majority in city councils, but smart voting already faces challenges. Navalen members are usually banned. The Russian opposition includes various factions outside the Navalny network, and at the same time, in what it described as an attempt to “prevent the” Belarusian scenario “, a Russian business association asked legislators to prohibit individuals named” foreign agents “and their family members from running for political office, and singling out a wife Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya. In Belarus, Svetlana Tikanovskaya received surprising support for the president after her husband, a staunch critic of Lukashenko, was imprisoned before the elections. Who has never announced his intention to seek political office, was reported to have left Russia on Wednesday. German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that Navalnaya landed in Frankfurt on a “private visit”, citing unnamed sources. It is unclear if or when Navalnaya plans to return to Moscow. She was arrested twice while participating in the weekend protests in January. “I expect there will be a similar number or perhaps more people in the protests in the spring and summer,” said Evgeny, a St. Petersburg demonstrator. “There will only be new goals, and I expect the government to provide us with these goals.”