9/9/20
Navalny’s brush with death stands apart even from past assassinations in which the Kremlin was accused of having a hand. Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal were exiles who were targeted in a foreign land, the UK, and unknown to Russians and foreigners alike before their poisonings. Navalny, by contrast, is well known inside and outside Russia, on whose soil he was attacked, and a figure from Russia’s present — if not its future — rather than its past. As former security service members, Litvinenko and Skripal may have been seen by Russian intelligence as traitors worthy of punishment, whereas Navalny is an opposition politician who operates in the open rather than covertly. Navalny’s poisoning, then, eliminates the distinction previously drawn by Putin between enemies and traitors, the former being deserving of respect. If that line has been erased, it suggests that the regime — certainly its most hardline elements — feels more endangered than ever. The place where Navalny was poisoned — Tomsk, deep inside Russia — renders implausible the claim that he was targeted by Russia’s enemies with the goal of damaging its international standing. And the manner in which he was attacked was sophisticated, unlike the killings of Boris Nemtsov and Anna Politkovskaya, so much so that it cannot be blamed on rogue or overzealous surrogates like the Chechens.
Curiously, Merkel — not Navalny’s doctors, the health minister, or the police — personally announced the diagnosis. The German leader knows full well, as would any chancellor, that her country’s relations with Russia, whatever its behavior, will have to be maintained, if only because Germany is more responsible for the state of Europe than either France or the United States. By personally declaring that Navalny was, in fact, poisoned and suggesting it had something to do with the Russian state, Merkel pre-empted the criticism of her relationship with Putin she knew would come from other Western politicians. As for the material penalties Russia faces, it will be difficult to impose targeted sanctions, as the UK did in response to the Litvinenko and Skripal poisonings, given that the West has not been given any names and is unlikely to be provided with any material evidence. In the cases of Crimea’s annexation and the war in eastern Ukraine, it was clear to all that the Russian state, or major regime elements, was culpable, justifying economic sanctions. Where individual murders are concerned, targeted sanctions are the West’s go-to response. In the case of Navalny’s poisoning, however, the difficulty of identifying the culprits increases the likelihood that broader sanctions will be imposed.
