Almost everything that happens today is absorbed by one topic —
the war.
Any normal person is paralyzed when he sees the shots from the war.
It’s not the case when someone has the luxury to stay away from combat or be neutral.
It’s just the case when you support the civilians’ killings, or you are against it.
However, today’s topic might not concern the war directly,
but it has so many frightening parallels that we need to discuss it in the Ukrainian context.
This topic is Alexey Navalny’s sentence.
Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 9 years in a maximum-security labor camp for… in fact, no idea what for.
His previous cases like “Kirovles” or “Ives Roche” at least had some storyline you could analyze.
Those sentences were made out of thin air.
Normal business activity was considered a crime, the profit was considered stolen money,
and getting this profit was equalized to money laundering.
But the sentence made yesterday stands out even here — it’s not just made out of thin air, it has nothing to do with reality.
With the same success you could sentence Navalny for espionage while digging the tunnel to India.
I’ve made a video explaining why “Kirovles” and “Ives Roche” sentences were unfair and politically motivated.
I can’t make a video about this sentence because there’s nothing to analyze.
The prosecutors just took 4 fund’s donors (two of them were deliberately sent with money,
two of them real but they were pressured to file a complaint).
Those 4 donors stated that Navalny stole their donations for 2.7 million rubles. There’s no evidence of such theft.
Some witnesses openly said that they were pressured by the prosecution, and even recorded the audio.
I’ll remind you that the fund published a detailed report on how the money is spent.
Any person could download this report and make sure that all the expenses are adequate and understandable.
But in court they’ve just presented a list of his expenses paid by a personal bank card — those were some common payments like for a taxi or for a dinner in a restaurant —
and said that it proved the theft and misuse of donations.
Navalny’s team proved that the judge constantly consulted with the President’s Office employee.
So, she obediently passed the sentence.
This case is best portrayed by one fact.
At first, at the end of 2020 the prosecution stated that Navalny stole 356 million rubles.
I’d like to remind you that Alexey was in Germany getting treatment after poisoning with Novichok.
And such a grand accusation should have persuaded him to stay there. But he came back.
A 356-million case didn’t happen though.
In the end it came to 4 victims and the sum became 100 times smaller.
The trial was held right in the labor camp so that nobody could see or hear it.
They threatened with 356 million but in the end, they got 2.7 mln. That’s OK in the current situation, what’s the difference, really.
In the end they’ve got this strange trial inside the prison 100 km away from Moscow.
All in all, for both cases Alexey got 9 years in a maximum-security labor camp.
There’s no point in discussing the term of imprisonment itself. It’s clear it will end exactly when Putin’s term ends.
The attempt to murder Navalny or his arrest are just two episodes from a long list of activities performed by the government of Russia to destroy opposition and the civil society itself.
This process became more active during the last 2 years. And as we now see, it was a preparation for the war with Ukraine.
Trying to kill Navalny, destroy his Anti-Corruption Fund,
“Open Russia” or the “Memorial”, naming anyone a foreign agent, closing independent media, the Russian government tried to achieve one goal —
to behead the future anti-war movement and make it lose its media resources.
They want there were no politicians or public figures left in Russia who have enough weight to become a symbol of this protest.
So that people wouldn’t be able to get alternative information. The politicians should be in prison or abroad or, well, dead.
And the media should be closed and destroyed as if they’ve never existed.
Because Peskov’s tales that an absolute minority of Russians are against the war are not true.
People are demoralized indeed — by the absence of leaders, huge sentences under the “fakes” law, brutal arrests even in one-person pickets and the hysterical choir on TV.
It works for now.
The history of the Russian government's relationship with Ukraine and Navalny’s retaliation are intangibly connected.
In both cases it’s a collision of the old Soviet establishment and the real politics, the collision of principles with the unprincipled, duplicity as a lifestyle with sincerity.
This collision is so painful for the establishment that it feels like being deceived.
Now it’s easy for us to understand what was in Vladimir Putin’s head and what is now, just by watching his propaganda.
Today he literally quotes Soloviev and Skabeeva, those evening talk-shows, where “the experts” shower the audience with their empty speculations.
It’s clear now why the federal media kept criticizing Ukraine — they did it for their one and only viewer in Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin really thought that Ukraine is a fake country ruled by the oligarchs who gave their clown puppet Zelensky some power.
That there’s chaos, no governance and it’s very much like Somalia.
Push it and it will crumble.
The oligarchs will kick Zelensky out, and we will make a deal with them about money, power, or territories.
It’s not our first time to make deals with oligarchs, we know all about them.
Now they are working for America, but they’ll easily change their tune — we’ve got enough money.
I mean it wasn’t just a radical overestimation of his power, but he imagined that Ukraine is just the same as it was shown on TV —
the territory without governance but with endless political chaos.
In reality we can see a government which is still a government even a month after the beginning of a full-scale war on its territory.
Quick ad and we’ll continue.
Let’s continue. Despite the tales of Russian propaganda and Vladimir Putin’s views, Ukraine is still a government even a month after the beginning of the war.
All the governmental functions are being performed, it’s still easy to have the documents done in the app ДIЯ (DIIA),
monetary system and banking are working, social benefits and pensions are being paid, all the services are provided as fully as possible.
And this is when the part of the country is occupied, the towns are being destroyed, streams of refugees are leaving the country and almost a third part of the economy is destroyed,
when the government machine’s load is extremely high, when every day they have to solve so many problems and make so many decisions
that they don’t normally do even in a year.
And the government keeps going — the army obeys the orders, hospitals treat patients, foreign passports can be ordered in a couple of clicks.
But the main thing Putin can’t understand at all is how the Ukrainian government works.
The Ukrainian citizens might have plenty of complaints about Zelensky, the Parliament, the mayors.
Many of those complaints are fair. But there is one important thing — those people were truly elected in competitive elections.
These people have a true mandate from people, their legitimacy is based on it, they depend on their voters.
For example, the mayor of Kharkiv is not like the governor of Saint-Petersburg Beglov —
nobody shoved him into the voters’ throats, he doesn’t owe his position to oligarchs, Zelensky or “the American puppet masters”.
He was elected by the citizens of Kharkiv. And they didn’t give him — the mayor — any mandate to surrender the city.
Of course, Putin doesn’t believe in elections.
The only competitive election he participated in as a head of Sobchak’s staff office was a failure. By the way, Sobchak lost it to his own deputy.
Putin believes in deals, in secret power behind the decisions, in appointments after some serious people’s conversations.
Any big election in Russia in the previous years is a special operation with the most elaborate techniques of massive fraud.
The only important thing is that the designated candidates formally passed this procedure.
Putin is sure that it is like this everywhere.
They’ve just learned how to deceive professionally — they’ve made this show more complex so that people could believe that they can really choose the most important people.
We haven’t discovered their secret yet, that’s why they reproach us for fraud.
Putin understands that any of his designated governors or government members pray in front of icons today and will open a Stalin’s monument tomorrow.
They don’t care what idea to serve.
It only matters that they have a portrait of a person who designated them on their wall.
And he expected as much from the government machine in Ukraine.
And what’s the difference what color the flag is at your administration if your salary is raised and you could steal even more?
He expected this but faced a real democracy as it is.
There might be flaws in this democracy but it’s a democracy where the elected people are in power.
It wasn’t just Putin’s mistake or stupidity. It’s a collision of two worlds living in two dimensions — of a Soviet establishment and the elected politicians.
The world where you can solve any issue and make a deal about money, and the world where you must really go and persuade people.
Putin wanted to scare the Ukrainian oligarchs and buy them off from the US.
The problem is that Ukraine doesn’t belong to oligarchs and the Ukrainian politicians don’t belong to the USA.
Everything belongs to the citizens of Ukraine.
A very similar collision of Vladimir Putin with another dimension happened more than a year ago – when Alexey Navalny returned.
Who is Navalny according to propaganda?
Some insignificant con artist, who is ruining Russia for the American money.
This scheme is very clear to Putin.
Moreover, we understand more clearly how much Russia spent to destabilize Europe supporting the most fervent extremists.
In Putin’s world the West financing Navalny is a very understandable concept.
Here is money, you work for this money.
The money comes from some clever scheme with donations,
but we are experienced in geopolitics, we understand where it comes from.
Now we finally understand why they tried to kill Navalny, and destroy the staff offices’ structure,
why people were imprisoned or forced out of the country.
Navalny’s organization would be a center of an anti-war protest.
And it would be clear that Russia is far from being in agreement with this war.
When poisoned Navalny left Russia it was considered the best possible outcome.
You survived – fine, but it’s a one-way ticket.
You got everything you wanted – Putin’s major enemy won’t starve to death in Europe.
You will have a good life, write books about my bloody regime on American grants, teach in universities, and speak on TV – you’ll have a calm, wealthy and satisfying life.
Like Khodorkovsky – an opponent somewhere abroad is not an opponent.
Sit in opposition somewhere there – not closer than in Poland.
When Navalny returned – it was a slap in the face.
You understood nothing? I’ve released you, gave you a chance to have a good life in the West.
You are free but don’t come back, is it not clear enough?
Putin grew up among people who would get this hint, this silent agreement immediately.
You wanted money and western life – go ahead.
Vladimir Putin just couldn’t appreciate that he met a real politician.
A politician, whose capital is not imaginary American money, but his followers who support him.
A Russian politician, the leader of the Russian opposition, can’t live safely in Germany and teach.
He’ll lose everything he achieved in these 10 years.
His capital is not money but a real support of millions of people.
In Putin’s world Navalny is a violent madman who doesn’t understand a normal conversation, a real conversation about money.
There could be no supporters, there could be just a deal and a sack of money for election imitation.
In the case of Navalny as well as with Ukraine we can see the collision of an old Soviet leader –
who measures the world with money, square meters of apartments and mansions,
and the deals behind the scenes – with a real public politician.
There could be no one like this in Putin’s world.
This reality is just impossible for him.
He really believes that it’s some tricky plot, and he was played by his enemies.
All this fury in both cases – the most severe conditions for Navalny in prison and this destructive war with Ukraine –
was partially caused by this feeling that you have been played.
Both events (though different in scale) came from one head
where money rules, and there are no principles, and you can make a deal on everything.
In both cases normal and healthy modern society meets the world from a fairytale novel “Dunno on the Moon” which some elderly secret service agents built instead of capitalism.
It’s the world of a zero-sum game. If you don’t stand up, you will be stood up.
If you are stood up, you’re betrayed. If you are betrayed, you need to take revenge.
Even if nobody made a deal with you, and the “Code of Conduct” you invented is true just for you.
Ultimately, Putin feels like he has been deceived just because normal people refuse to play in his imaginary world.
The former system chose to die in the bloodiest way trying to kill everything that could replace it –
a democratic country nearby, and the first big new-type politician inside the country.
Trying to kill the future before it killed the past.
But the future is stronger in both cases. And the past collapses on its own.
Please note that Navalny and Ukraine have something else in common –
extraordinary corruption and incompetence came to the surface.
Because Navalny’s alleged call to his poisoner using a database bought on the black market
and the rations overdue for years – are just the same.
Somebody steals trading data, including of their own colleagues, and somebody steals food for the soldiers.
We can see horrible agony. But it’s an agony.
The system where the chiefs make decisions in an imaginary world, the decisions which can’t be implemented, is about to die.
Because 20 years of corruption and ineffectiveness decomposed this vertical.
It would be better if the old died peacefully without killing people. But it will die anyway.
By the way, watch Masyanya. A good video has just been released. Perhaps you don’t know about it, but they still make it. And yesterday they’ve released a good cartoon. Watch it!
Till tomorrow.