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MOSCOW – A court on Wednesday classified Alexei Navalny’s political movement as extremist, a striking attack by President Vladimir Putin that also sent a message to President Biden ahead of their meeting next week: Russia’s internal affairs are not up for discussion.
The court’s decision – which almost certainly had the blessing of the Kremlin – appears to push the resistance against Mr. Putin further into secrecy, after several months in which the Russian government’s years-long efforts to suppress dissent entered a new, more aggressive phase. Under the law, Mr Navalny’s organizers, donors or even social media supporters can now be prosecuted and face imprisonment.
The ruling increased the risks of the summit in Geneva for Biden, who has promised to respond to Putin’s violations of international norms. But the Russian president said that while he is ready to discuss cyberspace and geopolitics with Biden, he will not be involved in talks about how he will run his country. The question is to what extent Mr. Biden accepts these demands.
“Opinions about our political system can differ,” Putin told the heads of international news agencies last week. “Just give us the right, please, to determine how this part of our lives is to be organized.”
The June 16 Geneva meeting comes after months during which Putin dismantled much of what remained of Russia’s political pluralism – and made clear he would ignore Western criticism.
Navalny was arrested in January after returning to Moscow after recovering from a poisoning last year that Western officials say was carried out by Russian agents. Since then, thousands of Russians have been arrested in the protests. Prominent opposition politicians have been imprisoned or forced into exile; Online media were described as “foreign agents”; Twitter and other social networks are under government pressure.
“The state has decided to fight any independent organizations with massive bombing,” Mr Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation – one of the groups declared extremist on Wednesday – said in a tweet anticipating the ruling.
The Kremlin denies playing any role in the campaign against Mr Navalny and his movement, and insists that the Russian judiciary is independent. But analysts and lawyers widely see the courts as subservient to the Kremlin and the security services, particularly in politically sensitive cases.
Mr. Putin has already indicated that he will reject any criticism of the Kremlin’s handling of the Navalny case by claiming that the United States has no standing to lecture others. At Russia’s high-profile annual economic conference in Saint Petersburg last week, Putin repeatedly invoked arrests of capitol rioters in Washington in January when he challenged repression in Russia or its ally Belarus.
“Look at the unfortunate events in the United States where people refused to accept the election results and stormed Congress,” Putin said. “Why do you only care about our irregular opposition?”
The “irregular opposition” is the Russian term for political groups not represented in parliament that openly demand Mr. Putin’s removal from office. For years, they were tolerated, even if they were closely monitored and often persecuted. Wednesday’s court ruling indicated that this era of tolerance is drawing to a close.
Prosecutors had provoked Mr Navalny and other opposition figures, but usually under pretexts, such as violating rules on public gatherings, laws not related to their political activities or, more recently, regulations against gatherings to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Behind the scenes, according to Western governments and rights groups, the Kremlin has gone further: assassinating or driving journalists, dissidents and leaders of the political opposition into exile. Mr. Navalny narrowly escaped an assassination attempt with a chemical weapon last summer. In 2015, another opposition leader and former first deputy prime minister of Russia, Boris Y. Nemtsov, shot by a pistol. But officials denied any role in those actions.
The nationwide dismantling of Mr. Navalny’s network marked a new stage in the crackdown on dissent through a formal legal process to dissolve opposition organizations, even though the country’s 1993 constitution guarantees freedom of expression.
The Kremlin’s campaign against the opposition intensified after Mr. Navalny’s January return from Germany, where he was receiving medical treatment after a nerve gas attack. Police arrested Mr. Navalny at the airport and a court sentenced him to two-and-a-half years in prison for breaching his parole for a misappropriation case that a rights group said was politically motivated.
In power since 1999 as prime minister or president, Putin’s tightening of screws on opposition and opposition came gradually. In a long period of post-Soviet democracy during his rule, elections were held, the Internet remained mostly free and limited opposition was tolerated. He called his regime “soft authoritarianism.”
But prosecutors this spring requested that the court ban Mr. Navalny’s movement, using a label that likens its members to terrorists, without bothering to make a public case that the nonprofit groups were in fact seditious organizations. Evidence was compiled and the case was heard behind closed doors in a Moscow courtroom.
The attorney representing the organizations, Ivan Pavlov, who had access to the evidence but had no authority to disclose it, said after a preliminary hearing that he was not persuasive, and that he would make public as much as the law allowed. Within a few days, police detained Mr. Pavlov on charges of disclosing classified evidence in another case, unrelated to Mr. Navalny, in what appeared to be a warning to avoid aggressively defending Mr. Navalny’s organization. He faces up to three years in prison.
Russian legal experts say the anti-extremism law provides ample scope for a large-scale crackdown on dissent in the coming days or months, but it remains unclear how it will be implemented.
Under the law, the group’s organizers could face prison sentences of up to 10 years if they continue their activities. Anyone who donates money can be imprisoned for up to eight years. Public comments such as social media posts in favor of Mr Navalny’s groups can also be prosecuted as support for extremists.
The case targeted three nonprofit groups, Navalny’s headquarters, the Anti-Corruption Fund and the Citizens Rights Defense Fund. In an initial ruling, the court ordered a halt to some of the groups’ activities last month.
In anticipation of the final verdict, Mr. Navalny’s aides dissolved one of the groups, Navalny’s Headquarters, which runs his network of 40 political offices, before the court had a chance to classify it as an extremist group. Mr. Navalny’s aides said they hoped some offices would continue to function as self-contained local political organizations.
“Unfortunately, we must be honest: it is impossible to work under these conditions,” Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s aides, said in a YouTube video, warning that continuing to work would subject supporters of the opposition leader to criminal prosecution. “We are officially dissolving Navalny’s office network.”
When they announced the case in April, prosecutors argued that Mr. Navalny’s groups were in fact seditious organizations disguised as a political movement. In a press release, prosecutors said that “under the guise of liberal slogans, these organizations are busy creating conditions to destabilize the socio-political situation.”
Mr. Navalny was prevented from forming a political party, and instead worked through several NGOs. These groups have persisted for years, despite constant pressure from Russian authorities, to advance an anti-corruption campaign that has frustrated and embarrassed Mr. Putin, often making heavy use of social media.
Mr Navalny’s movement has been the most prominent in Russia to publicly call for Putin’s impeachment through elections, and his supporters say the Kremlin is determined to crush the effort before it comes to fruition.
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