Alexey Navalny Never Wanted to Be a Dissident

Long viewed in the West as Russia’s best chance for a democratic future, Navalny, whose health has suffered, is now at grave risk of dying in captivity. Even his lawyers — who served as his final lifeline to the outside world — have been targeted for arrest and prosecution.

At the same time, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Navalny to take up strong antiwar positions that make it unlikely he can ever win elective office in Russia, even if he were to regain his freedom.

Among Ukrainians, Navalny’s outspoken criticism of the war is viewed, in part, as a self-serving effort to maintain publicity on his own case. And in Russia, where thousands of families have lost husbands, fathers, sons and brothers in a war that Putin and the Russian Orthodox have proclaimed a just and necessary fight, Navalny’s views seem antipatriotic.

For years, Navalny has cheered Ukrainians for demanding democracy in the streets during the Orange Revolution of 2004-05 and the Maidan Revolution in 2013-14, wishing that Russians would come together in a similar uprising against Putin.

But Putin’s policies toward Ukraine, especially the invasion and annexation of Crimea — which was overwhelmingly supported by the Russian public — repeatedly put Navalny in a bind, grasping for a stance that would not contradict the views of regular Russian voters, whose support he would need to one day win elective office. After Putin ordered the annexation, Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation embarked on a new project: sociological research and polling. This included an effort to measure Russian public opinion about what was happening in Crimea, and the picture was complicated.

More than 55 percent believed the rights of Russian speakers were being infringed upon in Crimea, a main Kremlin propaganda point. More than 85 percent said they wanted Crimea to become part of Russia. But nearly 75 percent also said they viewed war between Russia and Ukraine as “impossible.”

In the following months, Navalny would continue to calibrate his public statements on the Crimea question, trying to balance his criticism of Putin’s illegal annexation and Navalny’s personal view, shared by a majority of Russians, that Crimea was rightfully Russian.

During a radio interview in October 2014, Navalny offered a realistic but controversial update to his position, which set off a storm among Ukrainians. “Crimea, of course, now de facto belongs to Russia,” Navalny said. “I believe that, despite the fact that Crimea was seized in blatant violation of all international norms, nevertheless, the reality is that Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation. And let’s not fool ourselves. And I strongly advise Ukrainians not to deceive themselves either. It will remain part of Russia and will never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future.”

The longtime head of Ekho Moskvy, Alexey Venediktov, pushed Navalny for clarity, demanding on-air to know if Navalny would surrender Crimea back to Ukraine if he ever had the power to do so.

“Is Crimea a bologna sandwich, or something to be passed back and forth? I don’t think so,” Navalny said.

Navalny’s dodge reflected the realpolitik of the moment. But Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 meant there was no longer any room for hedging — at least as far as millions of Ukrainians were concerned. By then, Navalny was imprisoned and had little choice but to come out squarely against the war.

In a bid to position Navalny as a prominent critic of the invasion, he and his team turned to the question, suddenly of intense interest in capitals worldwide, of what a post-war Russia might look like. From a legal and political standpoint, this was far more difficult, and potentially perilous, than it might seem. Tough new laws prohibited any criticism of the Russian military or the war, so any anti-war statement by Navalny would risk new criminal prosecutions that could add years to his sentence.

And despite clear public discomfort over Putin’s September 2022 military mobilization campaign — which spurred hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men to flee the country — in opinion polls, a majority of Russians still professed support for the war. Politically, Navalny was at odds with his own people.

Despite these risks and obstacles, Navalny and his team needed to capture some of the global attention focused on Russia and the war. So, in a Washington Post essay, Navalny set out to answer a question: “What does a desirable and realistic end to the criminal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine look like?”