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| (Photo: Belkus) |
Moscow’s biggest opposition demonstration in recent years, Russia’s most popular blogger, Alexei Navalny, is showing that it’s not just via the web that he can work a crowd.
“One for
all!” he shouts at the people protesting against the 4 December election
results. “All for one!” comes their response for the umpteenth time. “You can
see it doesn’t just work for the Russian March,” he proudly says.
Another
Moscow protest
- The Russian opposition plans to mount a major rally on Saturday to protest against the results of Sunday’s election.
- Opposition leader and former minister Boris Nemtsov says the demonstration will go ahead no matter what.
- “The authorities are trying to intimidate their own people and are doing everything possible to prevent the rally from going ahead. "
He put his
finger on a sore spot. The Russian March is organised by nationalist and
extreme right wing groups every year. In 2007, he was expelled from the
opposition Yabloko party ostensibly because of his dalliance with Russia’s
nationalist movement.
But he says
his expulsion was really the result of his criticism of the party leadership.
Nevertheless, last month, he made a point of taking part in the Russian March.
He finds
fault with Russia’s liberal opposition for sweeping issues such as immigration
and integration under the carpet. He is only too pleased to point to Angela
Merkel’s words about the failure of the multicultural experiment in Germany.
Corruption
The
35-year-old blogger earns his living from a lawyer’s practice. On his blog, he
attacks major companies such as Russia’s Rosneft oil transport concern. He is a
Rosneft shareholder and as such has insight into the financial wheeling and
dealing of the company which, he says, has done the Russian state out of
billions of euros.
Mr Navalny
accuses the authorities of involvement in large-scale fraud and has launched a
website where people can publish information about fraud and corruption.
He brought
up the corruption issue when he met Prime Minister Mark Rutte during the Dutch
leader's visit to Moscow in October. He called on the Netherlands to do
everything possible to combat Russian corruption and money laundering.
Political
career?
His
blogging and other activities are making Mr Navalny increasingly popular. He
does not hide the fact that he would be very willing to swap his virtual
popularity for a job in real-life politics, but, he says, only if the time is
right. At the moment, he doesn’t believe truly democratic elections are
possible in Russia.
He prefers
setting up a movement that isn’t governed by electoral regulations and official
approval. This makes him a formidable opponent - and one that the Kremlin can’t
get to grips with. He’s young, eloquent, highly educated (partly in the United
States) and is idolised by tens of thousands of internet users. In an
interview last year, he said:
“I may be
just a little mosquito, but my bites hurt. The system finds it difficult to put
up with them. It’s my job to encourage hundreds, thousands of people like me to
join in the fight. Then we’ll break down all the walls. We’re definitely going
to do that.”
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