It would be unfair to call Alexei Navalny a Russian imperialist of Putin’s ilk. Nevertheless, his reputation in Ukraine was mixed. This has to do with a sentence from 2014.
Since Ukrainians are killed by the Russian army every day, the increase in political repression in Russia is only followed on the sidelines in this country. According to the human rights organization Memorial, which was dissolved by the Moscow City Court shortly before the full-scale invasion, the number of political prisoners in Russia has increased 15-fold since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and is now around 600 People. That’s a lot, but it can’t be compared with Russia’s victims in Ukraine. Tens of thousands died in Mariupol alone.
Nevertheless, the death of the Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny also caused a stir in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian news portals also reacted with breaking news and lead stories. Although Ukrainians’ attitude towards Navalny has always been ambivalent, apart from a few mockers online, no one is happy about his death. Because the murder of by far Putin’s most important opponent, the undisputed number one within the Russian opposition, with charisma and impressive rhetorical talent, is not good news for Ukraine either.
“Sausage sandwich”
The fact that Navalny was controversial in Kiev and the surrounding area essentially had little to do with the fact that he flirted with nationalist theses in his earlier years. Rather, it can be traced back to the politician’s conscious decision to reach as many people in Russia as possible.
What stuck with Ukrainians was his famous sentence from an interview with the now-closed Echo Moskvy radio station: “Is Crimea some kind of sausage sandwich that you can pass back and forth?” he said back then, a few months ago, in the fall of 2014 after the annexation of Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. At this point, Navalny was already under house arrest and Echo Moskvy’s editor-in-chief, Alexei Venediktov, had to go to his apartment for the interview. Although Navalny condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea as violating international law, he was of the opinion that the people of Crimea should decide for themselves who they want to belong to – and that it is hardly possible that the peninsula will actually be included in the Crimea Ukrainian state would return.
Navalny had to correct this position over time. A year after the Russian attack, on February 24, 2023, he published his end-of-war plan, which called for Russia’s withdrawal from all Ukrainian territories according to the internationally recognized 1991 borders. Nevertheless, Ukrainians remember the sandwich quote to this day. Ultimately, the annexation of Crimea marked the actual beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. From this perspective, the end of February is not the second anniversary of the Russian attack, but the tenth.
Navalny also tried to have an impact outside the liberal bubble
Since February 2022, however, Ukrainians have no longer paid as much attention to what Russian opposition members say – the country is too preoccupied with simply surviving. It is also undoubtedly the case that it remains unclear what any cooperation with the powerless opposition, which is largely located abroad, will achieve. From a Ukrainian perspective, it makes more sense to focus all diplomatic efforts on arms deliveries, joint arms projects and obtaining financial aid.
However, it would be wrong to conclude on the basis of Navalny’s statements in Crimea that he was just a Russian imperialist, like Putin. Alexei Navalny was one of the few Russian opposition figures who tried to reach Russians outside the small liberal bubble – and even within that there were plenty of people who thought the annexation of Crimea was wrong only in form, but were more in favor of it in principle . A clear position on the unconditional return of the peninsula would never have gained a majority in Russia, which is why it is not particularly surprising that Navalny looked for a middle ground and deliberately avoided interviews with well-known Ukrainian journalists such as Dmytro Gordon in order to avoid the issue to go.
In any case, Navalny’s support for a return would have been a criminal offense in Russia, as Crimea is enshrined in the constitution as part of Russia. What the pseudo-liberal presidential candidate Xenia Sobchak was allowed to claim in 2018, which was agreed with the Kremlin, was not an option for Putin’s personal enemy.
The militarization of Russia was overlooked
Due to Russia’s obvious involvement in the Donbass war, it was also incomprehensible to many Ukrainians that Navalny’s team focused on the issue of fighting corruption. In a way, this actually helped distort the optics: it created the impression that people who love their yachts and palaces so much wouldn’t risk a big, open war. The advancing militarization of Russia, which was actually obvious, was overlooked.
However, the accusation that Navalny and his colleagues were unable to stage significant protests against Putin is not fair. For Ukrainians, who carried out two successful revolutions in 2004 and 2014, street protests may be par for the course. The Orange Revolution and the Maidan revolutions were possible not least because despite all the repression there was a free media and opposition parties in parliament.
This is no longer the case in Russia. It is not Navalny who is to blame for this, but rather the entire Russian society, which allowed itself to be depoliticized at the beginning of the noughties and came to terms with the supposed economic stability of the Putin era in exchange for its own rights. Institutions were dismantled step by step – and Russia ultimately developed into an almost totalitarian state. It has no longer been a “managed democracy” since February 24, 2022 at the latest.
Ukraine will not maintain good relations with Russia in the foreseeable decades, even in the post-Putin era. The wounds of the Russian war of aggression are too great, too painful. But although some Ukrainians dream of the complete collapse of Russia, a somewhat normal, sensible, stable state beyond its own borders that leaves Ukraine alone would be the best scenario for the future. It is quite possible that Alexei Navalny, for all his disadvantages, was someone who could have achieved this.