At first,there was enough life in the Russian opposition to prevent Navalny’s elimination. In the summer of 2013,a Russian court in a provincial town jailed him in his first criminal case – but it was forced to release him 24 hours later after thousands of people blocked the streets in central Moscow.
Even when the Kremlin was emboldened by its popular annexation of Crimea in 2014,Putin did not jail the pesky protest leader – it was clear at the time that the Kremlin would suffer more damage from the move than it was worth.
Dissenters have fled or been silenced
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By 2020,that rationale had shifted. Internal repression had steadily grown. As the public increasingly shied away from direct protest – and the long prison sentences that resulted – FSB agents poisoned Navalny.
They failed to kill him,and hoping that there was still a heartbeat in the anti-Putin movement,he took the decision to return to Moscow.
Then,the full-pressure of the Kremlin vice was applied. He was thrown into prison,with spurious sentences piling up on top of each other. Where once he had commanded thousands in the streets,only the foolhardy raised their voices in the face of draconian new laws. Most of Navalny’s allies fled to exile or were jailed.