Dn my social media feeds, this February 16, two worlds. On the one hand, my Russian contacts, stunned, bereaved, crushed by the grief of the announcement of the death of the opponent Alexeï Navalny in the penal colony where he was serving a sentence inflicted by the Russian repressive apparatus. Portraits of Navalny, photos taken at the spontaneous commemoration sites where Russians come to pay their respects. On the other, the thread of my Ukrainian contacts, crushed by worry and fatigue, seething with anger, sharing news from the front, commemorating civilians and soldiers killed in Russian strikes, collecting money to buy drones or military equipment. No trace of Alexeï Navalny in these messages, apart from, from time to time, an ironic comment on his death, wielding this dark and cruel humor which helps Ukrainians to hold on in the war.
This deeply disturbing discrepancy is not anecdotal. It allows us to take stock of the complexity of relations between Ukrainians and Russians opposed to the war, who nevertheless face the same enemy, the Kremlin. The figure of Navalny reveals a deep incomprehension of the other, the roots of which go much further than 2022.
From Alexeï Navalny Russians remember the undeniable courage, the tenacity in opposition to the Putinian regime, the ability to instill faith in a better future. If his personality and his political choices have not always been unanimous in circles opposed to Putin, since his return to Russia in 2021, Navalny has acquired a symbolic stature which has erased doubts and divisions. From prison, he became the leader of the Russian opposition.
The Ukrainians, however, have many things to reproach Navalny for. The first of these is his ambiguous position on the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia in 2014. While recognizing a flagrant violation of international norms, on Echo of Moscow radio, the opponent suggested to the Ukrainians not to have any illusions: “Crimea will remain part of Russia and will not, for the foreseeable future, be part of Ukraine. » In the eyes of the Ukrainians, this posture amounted to de facto recognition of the annexation.
Deep litigation
If Navalny subsequently sought to qualify his position, evoking the plan to decide the fate of the peninsula through a referendum, the Ukrainians were far from being satisfied with this idea, which maintained the vision of a Crimea populated by Russian citizens and erased the violent nature of the imposition of a Russian government there. It was only in 2022, already behind bars, that the Russian opponent radically changed his position, condemning the armed aggression led by Russia, and affirmed his attachment to the territorial integrity of Ukraine in its 1991 borders, therefore including Crimea and the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass.
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