DISINFO: Alexei Navalny is not a politician, despite Western claims
SUMMARY
It is curious that European media and politicians call Alexei Navalny a “politician” and “opposition leader” while some Russian media call him a “blogger” and others “opposition member”. It is increasingly clear that Navalny is not a politician, because he doesn’t have a programme or a political force backing him. It is correct to say that he is a blogger, but it is also true that he made too much noise lately both in Russia and abroad for a mere blogger.
RESPONSE
Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation aiming to discredit Alexei Navalny, this time by claiming that he is not a real politician and hinting that there may be some foreign dark interests behind him.
Contrary to the claim, Alexei Navalny is a real politician and has long experience in this field. He has been involved in politics since he joined social liberal party Yabloko in 2000. He co-founded a short-lived political organisation called Narod in 2007, and ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013. He was barred from running as a presidential candidate in 2017, following an embezzlement sentence largely seen as political retribution based on charges presented in 2014 that the European Court of Human Rights consider “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”. Navalny’s political movement has been repeatedly targeted by the Russian authorities and its activities systematically obstructed, including physical attacks against him and his supporters. In 2018, Navalny launched a new political party called Russia Of The Future, a re-foundation of the former Party Progress. Frequent pro-Kremlin allegations that Navalny’s movement is funded from abroad have not been backed up with evidence and have always been denied by him and his associates, and there is no proof that he is anything but a Russian opposition activist.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that his anti-corruption foundation has never done any investigation, that he is being helped by Western intelligence services, that the West sent him back to Russia to prevent him from becoming irrelevant, that only caffeine and alcohol were found in his blood during his alleged poisoning, that the US wanted to use his case to block Russia's vaccine against coronavirus, that the West hopes that he dies to have an excuse for new sanctions, or that Western accusations on Navalny’s case are as false as they were about Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko.