WITH little more than a year remaining before Russia’s next presidential elections, Aleksei Navalny, the country’s leading opposition politician, is hitting the campaign trail. Over the coming weeks he will embark on a tour from Siberia to the Black Sea, opening offices and recruiting volunteers. The fact that a Russian court recently ruled him ineligible to run has done little to change his plans. “Dance as if no one can see you, campaign as if you’re already on the ballot,” Mr Navalny quips.
The court’s decision is far from the final twirl in Mr Navalny’s ongoing foxtrot with the Kremlin. Even if he is barred from running for office, he cannot be written entirely out of Russian politics; his place within it does not depend on electoral success, but on support from young, urban Russians disenchanted with the rule of the current president, Vladimir Putin. And Mr Putin could let Mr Navalny run without fear that he might actually win. Letting him do so might provide useful window-dressing, making Mr Putin’s inevitable victory seem less dodgy. (Although Mr Putin has yet to declare his intention to run in 2018,...Continue reading
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