Photo copyrightThe Daily Telegraph
About the article
- Author, Natalia Zotova
- Position, BBC
-
February 17, 2024
The “inflexible” politician died in prison, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is to blame for this, leading Western publications write. Russian media limited themselves to brief reports about the death of the oppositionist. Pro-government Russian bloggers insist that Putin “does not benefit” from the death of his main opponent.
Foreign media
The world’s leading publications came out today with photographs of Navalny on the front page. On the front page of the New York Times are photographs not of the politician himself, but of people laying flowers in memory of Navalny in different cities of Russia. Many people wishing to honor the memory of Navalny were detained by the police yesterday: the French Libération reminds of this.
“Navalny’s death increases tension between the United States and Russia,” wrote the NYT, recalling that yesterday US President Joe Biden blamed Putin and his entourage for Navalny’s death.
“But while he once threatened Putin with “devastating” consequences if Navalny died in prison, [теперь] The president acknowledged that after sanctions and other measures taken over the past two years in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is little more he can do,” the newspaper continued. The day before, Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London and co-author of a political biography of Navalny, told the BBC that it is now difficult to imagine more serious sanctions than those already imposed because of the war in Ukraine.
At the Munich Security Conference and before Navalny’s death, the mood was gloomy, the NYT journalist notes: Europeans fear that Trump will win the elections this fall in the United States, after which America will stop helping Ukraine and leave Europe alone with Putin.
Photo credit: The New York Times
On the editorial page of the British Daily Telegraph there is also a text about the reaction of Western leaders to Navalny’s death. In addition to Biden, Putin was accused of the death of opposition leader Ursula Von der Leyen, the presidents of France, Latvia and Ukraine – Emmanuel Macron, Edgars Rinkevics and Vladimir Zelensky.
Many Western media today have devoted their publications to texts about the oppositionist himself and his importance for the political life of Russia. In the German Tagesspiegel, a text about Navalny was published with the headline “Unbending”: the newspaper calls him the most important figure of the Russian opposition in recent history.
Photo credit: The Times
“The loss of Navalny’s strong and fearless voice, which continued to resonate on social media even from the brutal prison colonies where he was often held in solitary confinement, is a devastating blow to the Russian opposition and liberal anti-war activists still resisting Putin, mostly outside the country. “, — wrote influential American publication Washington Post.
Credit photo, Washington Post
Their obituary said Navalny “possessed extraordinary political intuition and fought tirelessly against popular indifference and pessimism, and was the only opposition figure in recent years who became known throughout Russia – despite the fact that Kremlin-controlled state television virtually ignored him.” .
The authors recall that Navalny wrote regularly from prison, and even managed to leave an order to his followers – to suggest what to do in the March presidential elections: to gather at the polling stations at exactly noon. “His spirit of protest was unshakable,” writes WP.
Danish Politiker featured international columnist Michael Jarlner’s column about Navalny on the front page.
The author of the text recalled how Navalny, in his signature style, joked about the likelihood of his death in prison: “50 to 50. Either I will die or I will not die.” “It reflected the irrepressible optimism he tried to exude. As if this was some kind of final humiliation for President Vladimir Putin and his Russian regime, which had previously tried to take his life. Now it has succeeded. On the second try,” the columnist wrote.
Russian media
Most Russian newspapers are not published on Saturday. On the editorial page of the Kommersant newspaper is an article about the Munich Security Conference, where the death of Alexei Navalny is mentioned in passing, in one paragraph. But there is a report by the chief chronicler of the president, Andrei Kolesnikov, about Vladimir Putin’s visit to the plant in Chelyabinsk. In the report, to be fair, the death of the oppositionist is mentioned – almost at the very end, on page 3 of the newspaper.
On the evening news yesterday, the main Russian television channels presented only brief, almost identical reports, based on the official statement of the Federal Penitentiary Service. They appeared towards the end of the episode and lasted only a few seconds.
The short reports about Navalny’s death were not accompanied by photographs of him or an explanation of who he was: the presenters only briefly reported that he was in prison for “fraud.” The NTV channel did not even use his name, calling Navalny solely by his last name.
State-run Channel One complained that Western leaders had said they “stated that Russia was responsible even before the investigation began.” The hosts of political talk shows also limited themselves to reading the FSIN press release.
The next morning, major Russian television channels did not include Navalny’s death in their newscasts at all.
image copyrightPolitiken
Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin bots on X (formerly Twitter) and Vkontakte are promoting claims that the Russian authorities do not benefit from Navalny’s death, “especially on the eve of the presidential elections”: such posts were noticed by the Agency publication (included in Russia in the register of “foreign agents” ). Pro-government commentators have a similar narrative used after Navalny’s poisoning in 2020 and after murder of Boris Nemtsov: supposedly the death of a political opponent before the elections is disadvantageous for Putin, since it puts him in a bad light, and this should remove any suspicion from him.
The head of the pro-government TV channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, also conveys the same idea. She laughed at Western leaders and publications who blamed the Russian authorities for the death of the oppositionist. “I won’t even begin to explain to them that everyone has long forgotten him, that there was no point in killing him, especially before the elections, that it would be beneficial to completely opposite forces,” – wrote she’s in X.
In response to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s demand that Russia “answer serious questions about Navalny’s death,” she wrote: “Russia doesn’t owe anyone anything—let’s start with that. You better joke about what we did in space. Let’s finish with this.”
Tina Kandelaki also insists that Navalny’s death will only harm Russia on the international stage: the politician died “exactly at the moment when the Russian opposition is an empty place, when the public position is turning towards Russia. The other side suddenly receives a gift that will undoubtedly cause an anti-Russian wave in the Western world.”