Russia and pro-Navalni squint at Belarus

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–This content was published on 05 February 2021 – 12:30
05 February 2021 – 12:30

(AFP)

Since the beginning of the pro-Navalni demonstrations, the Russian authorities and supporters of the opposition have looked at themselves in the mirror of Belarus, where a historic mobilization against power was brutally repressed.

“And now where do we go?” wonders a young pro-Navalni protester sheltering in a shopping mall, as he watches as riot troops proceed to massive arrests.

“I don’t know, look what the ‘shtab’ says,” a colleague replies.

The “shtab” is the “General Staff” of Alexéi Navalni, materialized on social networks by a Telegram chain of 160,000 subscribers. On Sunday, December 31, when the center of Moscow was closed and the protesters were being pursued by the police, from there slogans and meeting places were given.

All this is openly inspired by Belarus, where there is a Telegram chain, called NEXTA Live, followed by more than a million and a half people. Founded by a refugee blogger in Poland, the chain coordinated the revolt against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as of August 2020, which drew up to 100,000 protesters.

“After the January 23 demonstration, everyone was writing ‘we need a Russian NEXTA’. So let’s do a Russian NEXTA,” explained a close Navalni collaborator, Leonid Volkov, at the end of January.

This shows the proximity between the two countries. The mobilization against Lukashenko in Belarus, unprecedented since independence in 1991, has been closely scrutinized and analyzed by both Russian opponents and the Kremlin.

For the former it was a model and a source of inspiration, especially when Vladimir Putin expressed his support for Lukashenko, even proposing a military intervention for the sake of stability, and not to allow a revolutionary precedent in his closest neighbor.

– “Provocators” –

Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov nonetheless urged “no parallels” between Russia and Belarus. For him, there is only one similarity: the “provocateurs” among the opposition protesters in both Minsk and Moscow.

Shortly after the presidential election in Belarus, the crackdown on anti-Lukashenko protesters was very violent, even with accusations of torture.

The demonstration on January 31st, and even more so on Tuesday night in Moscow or Saint Petersburg against Navalni’s sentence to almost three years in prison, were harshly repressed. And the comparisons with Belarus resurfaced.

“Belarusian flashback”, the opposition media MBKh headlined, recalling that both in Moscow and Minsk the authorities closed the metro stations, chased protesters to the very yards of buildings, and detained thousands of people in crowded jails.

For the political scientist Konstantin Kalashev, the “force structures” (army, police, special services) came to the conclusion, with the Belarusian example, that with “the necessary firmness and coherence, any demonstration can be crushed”.

– Judicial harassment –

However, the Russian police have avoided resorting to riot control weapons – deafening grenades, jets of water, gases – which were used in Belarus against opponents of the regime.

Another source of inspiration is judicial harassment. As in Belarus, where all the representatives of the revolt are imprisoned or exiled, practically all of Navalni’s close collaborators are subject to legal action.

Thus, his spokesman, his brother, those responsible in Moscow and in the province – organizers of the demonstrations on January 23 and 31 in a hundred cities – are subject to judicial harassment, and many are jailed or under house arrest. .

Leonid Volkov, one of the figures of the movement, currently lives in Lithuania. Like Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, the leader of the Belarusian opposition, also a refugee in this country since August.

In an interview with AFP, the Belarusian opposition on Thursday called on Vladimir Putin to “listen to the people” and “solve this problem in a civilized way, without batons or stun guns.”

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