Putin poisoned Navalny – an open and shut case? Not quite

Alexei Navalny, one of the more colourful figures in Russia’s variegated opposition, lies seriously ill in a Berlin hospital. The doctors treating him say that “clinical findings indicate poisoning with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors”, but they are still trying to identify the actual toxin. Navalny’s team say that the poison was probably in a cup of tea he drank at Omsk airport before boarding a flight to Moscow last week and have lost no time in blaming Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin spokesperson, for their part, says such claims cannot be taken seriously.

These are the facts as they stand now. For critics of Putin, in Russia and abroad, the case is open and shut. It is yet another illustration of the Kremlin’s ruthless approach to any opposition figure who ventures to put his head above the parapet, and the impotence of the west to do anything about it. As so often, however, things may be a lot more complicated.

The indictment of Putin goes like this. The Kremlin – from Soviet times to the present day – has a record of poisoning opponents. Navalny, a charismatic figure who pioneered the use of social media in his campaign against corruption, could represent a particular threat in present circumstances. Regional elections are being held on 13 September. Putin’s poll ratings are in decline, and opposition candidates could make inroads into his authority at a local level. With protests still simmering in the far east region of Khabarovsk over the removal of a popular governor, and Belarus, on Russia’s western border, in the throes of what may or may not be a successful uprising, Putin looks more beleaguered than for some time. Neutralising, or even eliminating, Navalny could have a certain logic.

Except that practically every argument here could be challenged. The Kremlin is by no means Navalny’s only, or even his greatest, enemy. His anti-corruption campaigns, that focus on venality at local, as well as national, level, have made him a target in many quarters. Contract killings in the regions, where politicians and businesspeople operate local fiefdoms, are hardly unheard-of in today’s Russia, and money can be as much – or more – of a motivator as politics.

The idea that a poisoning necessarily bears a Kremlin signature is also questionable. The list of cases often cited as evidence of a track record – which includes the 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko in London and the alleged novichok attack on the Skripals in 2018 – have as many differences as similarities. Some may not have been poisonings, or even assassination attempts, at all. Just occasionally a Kremlin opponent may die of natural causes.

The assumption that Putin simply clicks his fingers and orders the extermination of individual opponents also needs to be contested. His power, especially in Russia’s regions, is nothing like as absolute as those who see him as a latter-day tsar insist. Indeed, his inability to get things done, to have the Kremlin’s writ run throughout Russia, has been a complaint that he has voiced throughout his 20 years in power. The most that can be said – and it is not nothing – is that he has presided over a climate where opposition figures, but not just opposition figures, can be attacked or killed with impunity.

Then again, that is to presume that Putin would have an interest in removing Navalny from the scene, either at all, or now. In terms of his national recognition and popularity, Navalny represents a negligible threat to the Kremlin; an irritant, perhaps, and a danger to some local pro-Kremlin candidates in the coming elections, perhaps. But the leader of a coordinated opposition, such as that which overthrew Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine six years ago, or threatens Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus now? Not even close.

It could be argued, in fact, that there are more downsides than upsides for Putin in what has happened – as there was with the Skripal case, which took place just before Russia hosted the World Cup. The sad reality is that anything untoward affecting a Russian opposition figure with a high profile abroad is always going to be laid at the Kremlin’s door. On the one hand, this reinforces the common image in the west of Putin as a brutal autocrat – something that Putin must now be well used to. On the other, though, such a reminder has the potential to affect the international climate, as it could do this time again.

It is not only regional elections that are on Putin’s agenda. A meeting with Donald Trump has also been in the planning for a date somewhere before US election. That could now become even less politically acceptable in Washington than it already was, depriving both leaders – but especially Putin – of a platform they had eyed for some time.

If the context and reasons for Navalny’s presence in a Berlin hospital in intensive care may not be as simple as first impressions might suggest, however, outsiders may not be quite so impotent as they might appear in the face of these events either. There have been calls for the European Union to impose sanctions – on the assumption of Kremlin complicity, and there might yet be sanctions, although many recognise that this would be a largely empty gesture.

It would be wrong, though, to ignore what has been achieved. It was pure chance that the German chancellor and the French president were holding their summer rendezvous when Navalny was rushed from Omsk airport to hospital in a coma. And it is just possible that no diplomatic pressure was needed to secure agreement to Navalny’s transfer from the Russian hospital to the care of German medics, with the costs being met by a German charity. For such an internationally known opposition figure to be taken out of Russian jurisdiction, however, amounts to a major concession by Russia, not least because it means that the Kremlin has effectively lost control of what happens next.

Even if the doctors in Omsk were supremely competent, entirely honourable and utterly immune to official pressure – which, by the way, is not impossible – their word would never inspire the same confidence internationally as whatever conclusions are reached by the doctors in Berlin. Depending on their findings, which are not yet complete, the onus will be on Moscow to investigate what happened. All this is a much more effective western response than harsh words and the imposition of yet more sanctions. What was done has also, probably, saved Navalny’s life.

Just as it is too early to pin blame, this is not the time to consider whether Navalny will ever return to Russia or resume his campaigning. It should, though, be a time for the Kremlin to reflect on how it presents itself to the world. At least the Kremlin’s first official response to Navalny’s hospitalisation was to wish him a speedy recovery – which was an improvement on Putin’s dismissive response to the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Why, though, has the Kremlin stuck at indignant denials? Why has no one expressed concern or promised a top-level investigation, should the medical reports point to a crime? For some, the obvious answer will be that such a response only serves to confirm Kremlin guilt. If only Russian officialdom could drop some of its reflexive defensiveness, its critics – in Russia and abroad – would find it that much harder to jump to the most negative conclusion.