By Adam Bennett
On Thursday 20th August, the Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny boarded a plane in Siberia. The flight to Moscow was scheduled to be smooth and, by Russian standards at least, quite short. For Navalny, however, things did not quite go to plan.
Witnesses report that moments after their flight reached full altitude, Mr. Navalny took a sip of pre-prepared tea. From then, it did not take long for his nervous system to block up. His tea, it transpired, had been laced with a poisonous substance made up of chemicals from the cholinesterase inhibitor group. Resultingly, Navalny’s brain was unable to function and he collapsed on the plane.
Equal parts activist, politician, and investigative journalist, Navalny occupies a fairly unique space in Russian national life. He is not the country’s only pro-democracy politician, but he is perhaps the most high-profile and boasts significant reach thanks largely to his popular YouTube channel.
He is also a long-standing enemy of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. In 2013, he finished second in Moscow’s mayoral elections. In 2018, he was barred from the Presidential elections off the back of a somewhat flimsy conviction for corruption. He also suffered poisoning-esque symptoms in the summer of 2019. Now, however, he is said to be fighting for his life in a Berlin hospital after suffering what German doctors are describing as a ‘severe’ poisoning. At the time of writing, Navalny remains hooked up to a ventilator in intensive care.
Enemies Of The State
If the Kremlin wanted a subtle way of removing its political opponents, it likely wouldn’t resort quite so often to poisoning. The method has been the go-to solution for the Russian state since the days of Lenin, who first set up Moscow’s ‘secret’ poisons laboratory in 1921. In the 99 years since, the message from various presidents has been consistent and clear: Oppose the regime, and you risk your life.
In various high-profile cases over the years, the KGB (and its modern successor, the Federal Security Service (FSS)) has been grimly creative in carrying out poisonings. In 1979 the Belgian dissident Georgi Markov was killed as he waited for a bus under Waterloo Bridge in London. It was only later that the police discovered the weapon used for the mysterious murder – a poison-tipped umbrella.
Similarly, a dark fate awaited the Ukrainian leader Stepan Bandera in 1959 when he sat down to pick through the morning’s headlines. Unbeknownst to his security team, a cyanide spray pistol had been concealed within Bandera’s newspaper of choice. All it took to activate was flipping over a page.
Such tales seem more at home in a John Le Carre novel, or perhaps a particularly gritty scene in the latest James Bond blockbuster. For the Kremlin, however, poisoning troublesome opponents has always served a dual purpose. Firstly, you remove the problem at hand. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, you also send a message to other potential agitators. A message that says, quite simply, the Russian state will do whatever it takes to defeat you. No strategy is too violent, no weapon too blunt.
A Modern Twist
All of which brings us to the fate of Alexei Navalny. Described in 2012 by the Wall Street Journal as ‘the man Putin fears most’, Navalny will have known for some time that his card had been marked by the Kremlin. The state has landed several blows on him over the years, arresting him for alleged embezzlement on two separate occasions, with both cases violating Navalny’s right to a fair trial. He ended up receiving two suspended prison sentences, for a total of eight and a half years.
The pro-democracy politician, however, wasn’t getting the message. Despite his prison sentences, Navalny continued using YouTube and Twitter to rail against what he described as a group of “crooks and thieves” running Russia. As protests against corruption and demands for democracy began to grow in neighboring Belarus, Navalny’s particular brand of anti-establishment rabble-rousing became all the more distasteful to those governing in Moscow. At a time when Vladimir Putin was very publicly digging his claws ever deeper into power in Russia, the pro-democracy infection could not be allowed to spread beyond borders. It was time for that near-century old message to be sent again.
And so, when Alexei Navalny put his lips around that cup of tea, he learned what Georgi Markov and Stepan Bandera took too long to discover. That he could not have made a more ruthless, or more powerful, enemy.
What Happens Now?
Frankly, wars have started over lesser crimes than murdering political opponents in your own country. There is a muted outcry underway demanding consequences for Vladimir Putin’s regime, with suggested responses from the international community ranging from economic sanctions to outright military aggression.
But such calls are rooted in naivety. Whilst the Russian state’s involvement is as likely as it is possible to be, the FSS is skillful enough to know how to conceal a smoking gun. In 2016, the British Government commissioned an inquiry into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal on their own soil. The eventual report concluded that the Russian President’s knowledge of attacks such as that on Mr. Skripal was ‘probable’ (which, in the language of inquiry reports, is as close to certainty as one can possibly stray) yet there was no proof. All logic, common sense, and historical precedents point to direct involvement from Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, but these are quite possibly the finest spies and undercover agents in the world. Deniability is their specialty.
All that is left for the international community to do is ruminate over precisely why this keeps happening. Keeping political opposition at bay to hold onto power is one thing, but what is Putin hoping to do with that power? What is his endgame? Writing in the Guardian last week, the polemicist Nick Cohen offered the following explanation.
“To ask what ideological project Vladimir Putin is advancing when he orders the murder of his opponents is to miss the point of the poison his gangsters dispense. All there is to say is that Putin wants to make opposition to his rule in Russia so dangerous that only the bravest will dare stand against him.”
– Nick Cohen, writing in The Guardian
Perhaps for strongmen such as Putin, power is its own means to its own end. Why over-intellectualize it? When you have held onto power for so long that you are, according to some reports, the richest man in the world, what is there left to achieve? Power is simply the jewel in your crown – beautiful and ceremonial. Nothing more.
What this latest poisoning does show is an increasing willingness by the Kremlin to clamp down on dissent, with scant regard for appearances. With little consequences to follow this incident, there is every reason to believe the regime will be further emboldened in their approach. In the two decades since Vladimir Putin first became president, his grip on power has rarely seemed as iron-clad as today.
Adam Bennett is the editor-in-chief of The International.
While You’re Here…
Why not take a moment to subscribe to The International’s free monthly newsletter? It takes seconds to sign up, and you’ll stay up to date with the stories shaping our world at a pace that won’t overwhelm.