Democracy, Putin Style

Sergei Sobyanin is the current mayor of Moscow and is backed by the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.  Alexei Navalny is a political thorn in the side of Putin who is running against Sobyanin.  Guess which one just got sentenced to five years in prison for fraud and embezzlement charges.  If you guessed Navalny you would be correct. If you guessed Sobyanin then you would be woefully naïve about the current state of Russian politics.

The current state of Russian politics is about identifying the opposition to Putin, trumping up any number of charges against him, and then getting that person convicted and out of the way.  In this case the opposition, Navalny, was easy to identify. He led mass anti-Kremlin protests in 2011 and in 2012 and routinely publishes corruption accusations against the Kremlin in his blog.  While charges and subsequent imprisonment are not infrequent in Russia, the difference with Navalny is that he is viewed in a positive light in the West and has garnered a large degree of sympathy with the Russian public.

The bottom line with Navalny’s conviction is not that he is going to prison for five years for what were widely viewed as politically motivated charges, although I’m sure that is at the apex of his worries right now, but instead of what it signifies about Mr. Putin.  Navalny had a global presence.  He had awards from such programs as Yale University, the magazines Foreign Policy and Prospect . Even the newspaper, Al Jazeera had positive remarks about him. The actions of the court have been disparages by the EU, Sweden, and even the United States. (full article here)  Mr. Putin however, doesn’t care about his reputation in the world.  His concern is with maintaining power and he has determined that he, and Russia, will be able to weather this small storm.