Editor’s note (December 18, 2023): This article was updated after Russian courts suspended hearings at which Mr Navalny was due to appear.
The last time The world heard Alexei Navalny on December 7, when Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, who was sentenced to 19 years in prison on various trumped-up charges (a sentence that could be extended to 30 years for new accusations of terrorism), announced a campaign aimed at discrediting the re-election of Vladimir Putin as president. That day, a message from Mr. Navalny appeared on »
At the same time, Mr. Navalny’s allies created a website called “Russia without Putin.” The goal was not to influence the election outcome, he said; The re-election of Mr. Putin is inevitable. It was more about revealing the emptiness: “The result will be faked. Our task is to make everyone understand that Russia does not need Putin.” As always, Mr. Navalny has shown that he is capable of making an impact even behind bars. Banned from fighting for Russians’ votes, he is fighting for their minds, hoping to turn them against the war and against Mr. Putin.
The following day, on December 8, Mr. Putin confirmed that he would run in the 2024 elections. This announcement was quietly inserted into a comment made by Mr. Putin at a reception at the Kremlin, in response to a call made staged by a former military commander of the Ukrainian Donbass region. The goal was to limit attention to Mr. Putin’s campaign rather than spotlight it, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a Berlin-based think tank. The Kremlin does not fear opposition politicians; they are all dead, in exile or in prison. Rather, he is worried about popular doubt about the legitimacy of Mr. Putin’s re-election.
Mr Navalny’s aim is to stoke these doubts. He wanted to ensure, he said in his message, that on election day “no one cared about the falsified result, but that all of Russia saw and understood” that it was rigged. The Kremlin, as usual, took Mr. Navalny’s threat seriously and removed him, at least from public view.
In October, several of Mr Navalny’s lawyers, who carry his messages to the outside world, were harassed and imprisoned. On December 11, the lawyers who had replaced them were informed that Mr. Navalny was no longer in his newest prison, Penal Colony No. 6, east of Moscow. Authorities did not tell them where he was taken. Mr. Navalny has been held in conditions amounting to torture since his arrest in 2021 and has been awaiting transfer to an even harsher prison for months. But the timing of his disappearance was almost certainly coordinated with Mr. Putin’s pre-election operation.
In recent days, Mr. Navalny’s lawyers have desperately tried to locate him within Russia’s vast gulag system, contacting 200 prisons. On December 18, Russian courts suspended hearings at which Mr. Navalny was supposed to appear (whether by video link or in person) until his “location” could be “established,” his lawyers said . For prisoners, the period of transfer between prisons is particularly dangerous; it is de facto impossible to hold anyone responsible for their life and safety. Mr. Navalny has never been missing for more than a few days. If Mr Navalny’s lawyers and family fail to locate him, there is nothing stopping the Kremlin from turning days into weeks. On social networks, the question “Where is Navalny?” is more and more significant.
Mr. Navalny is not the only political prisoner missing in recent days. Alexei Gorinov, a former Moscow municipal deputy, sentenced to seven years in prison for denouncing the war and whose health deteriorated in prison, has disappeared; he was seen by his lawyer in his penal colony on December 8.
On December 14, Mr. Putin held his annual press conference. His main objective was to demonstrate the continuity and lack of alternative to his rule. The war, he declared, would continue as long as it took to achieve its objectives. Meanwhile, in a rare daytime attack, a salvo of supersonic missiles hit kyiv and other cities in Ukraine. But other reports suggest that Mr. Putin’s goals are far from being achieved: while Russia bombarded Ukraine with rockets, EU The leaders agreed to begin accession negotiations with Ukraine. (Ukraine aspired to move closer to EU which triggered the overthrow of a Russian-backed government in 2014, followed by the Kremlin’s first attack on the country.)
The Russian president did not say how many hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives were consumed by his war, but some figures he used inadvertently alluded to it. As of September 2022, he said, 318,000 people had been mobilized; this year, another 480,000 people were registered. Russian and foreign sources agree that around 150,000 personnel were deployed at the start of the invasion. And Mr. Putin also said that at present, some 615,000 troops are directly involved in the fighting. Figures suggest more than 300,000 people have been killed or injured – a toll that matches the latest US estimates.
Mr. Putin said his war had already brought benefits: Russia’s economy is expected to grow about 3.5 percent this year and unemployment is at a record high. During his four-hour appearance, he said nothing about the presidential election. He thanked one of his supporters who said he had been “in power for as long as I can remember.” But one question remained unanswered: “Where is Navalny?” ■
Correction (December 15, 2023): A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the length of Alexei Navalny’s prison sentence. Sorry.