In August, Muscovites elect a new regional parliament. But protests have ensued because 19 opposition candidates have been barred from running. Dmitry Gudkov is one of them. He spoke to DW about the challenges he faces.
Image: Reuters/M. Shemetov
Advertisement
DW: In 2016 you were the only anti-Kremlin MP in the Russian parliament. Now, you want your Party of Changes to enter Moscow City Duma. But you are barred from running, just like 18 other independent candidates. Why does the electoral commission oppose you?
Dmitry Gudkov: They oppose me winning. Just like the other candidates. We had already completed half our election campaign. To win one of the electoral districts, I would need 12,000 votes. And I already had 7,500 voters who officially backed me. So I already had 60% of the necessary votes to win. The Moscow City Duma has 45 seats. With a coordinated election campaign, we the 19 independent candidates could have won seats in the legislature. If you add seven or eight candidates of the so-called system opposition, it would mean we could have commanded a majority.
So it was only logical that the authorities took this step? Presumably, you weren't surprised?
Exactly. Otherwise, they would have lost power. And the Moscow City Duma would have become a genuinely democratic parliament in charge of allocating 2,6 trillion rubles (€37 billion, $41.3 billion) ). It is a lot of money that is usually siphoned off in this city. So the authorities got scared and brazenly banned us from running.
Why brazenly?
Out of the blue, a police graphologist claimed that 499 of our supporters' signatures were forged. And suddenly absurd errors popped up in the database of our potential voters, where voters with male names had their gender down as female.
But that would be such an obvious case of manipulation that anyone would find hard to believe. If this really happened, what were the authorities' motives?
They adhere to the principle that has been established since the 1990s: namely that the people will believe anything. The authorities thought Muscovites would actually buy this.
But you do not and have started organizing protests. more than 10,000 people took to the streets when they learned you were banned from running. What, exactly, do you wish to accomplish?
We are doing everything we can. First, we will submit objections and complaints to the commission and courts. But people are also taking to the streets. I mean, imagine what it is like for them! Each one of us and our campaign assistants went through our electoral districts, asking for voters' signatures. The people saw us and understood that we are actually running, that we are an actual team collecting signatures. So they gave us their support and signed. And then, suddenly: boom! The authorities say Gudkov is not even on the list. And instead, a pro-government candidate emerges nobody has ever seen before.
Gudkov: Authorities think 'people will believe anything' they sayImage: picture-alliance/AP Photo/P. Golovkin
Do you think the protests will change anything?
We really want them to have an impact. If they keep brazenly excluding us from the election, we will fight for an election boycott. Or for the Moscow State Duma to be dissolved. I am no fan of protests. In fact, I do not like them at all. I am tired of them. But I had no choice.
The situation is odd insofar as the ruling party is currently very unpopular. Even party chairman Dmitry Medvedev has criticized the United Russia party. While campaigning, party candidates have been trying to conceal their party membership. Is this helping your cause?
Of course. Gathering signatures was easy for me. I approached voters and told them: support us against the United Russia party. They stopped in their tracks and gave us their signature. But as the approval rating of the ruling party drops, authorities also get more repressive. So we are constantly subjected to provocations. Several times, my campaign assistants were robbed. One was beaten up and suffered a brain concussion. The other got off lightly with just a bloody lip. Lists with signature were snatched from their hands.
When you look at Russian politics, you get the feeling that Russians keep reelecting omnipotent President Vladimir Putin and that there is no properly functioning opposition in the country. Why is that?
30 years of 'new' Russia
This browser does not support the audio element.
There is an opposition in Russia. They are the people whose investigative reports help fight corruption. There are politicians and activists...
...like Alexei Navalny?
Yes, among others. Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Dmitry Gudkov... but there is another kind of opposition, too. Like ordinary citizens fighting against toxic waste incineration plants. Or journalists demanding the release of their colleague Ivan Golunov [who was recently arrested by Russian police for alleged drug possession]. All these people are dissatisfied with the situation in Russia today.
Is this a proper civil society?
...it is growing increasingly influential in our country. Our society is becoming politicized. As are our private lives. Look at the young people. They are outraged because authorities are constantly talking about introducing internet censorship. And then they see political dinosaurs like Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, looking at computer screen through a magnifying glass.
And Vladimir Putin, who does not know how to use a smartphone and mixes up the terms transgender and transformer. These young people constitute a civil society that wants the old decision-makers to leave. So they are also an opposition force in Russia. One day, these two opposition forces will unite and change our country.
Who is Alexei Navalny?
Alexei Navalny is one of Russia's most prominent opposition leaders, having spearheaded protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been imprisoned in Russia since 2021.
Image: Imago Images/Itar-Tass/S. Fadeichev
Face of Russia's opposition
The lawyer-turned-political campaigner has been among the most prominent figures of Russia's opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny came to prominence in 2008, when his blog exposing malpractice in Russian politics and among the country's major state-owned companies came to public attention. Revelations published on his blog even led to resignations, a rarity in Russian politics.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/TASS/V. Sharifulin
Disputed parliamentary elections
In 2011 Navalny was arrested for the first time. He ended up spending 15 days in prison for his role at a rally outside the State Duma in Moscow. A recent parliamentary election victory for Putin's United Russia had been marred by instances of ballot stuffing, reported by demonstrators on social media. Upon his release, Navalny pledged to continue the protest movement.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Stenin
Second jail term
After being reelected president in 2012, Putin ordered Russia's Investigative Committee to launch a criminal inquiry into Navalny's past. The following year the campaigner was charged and sentenced again, this time for five years, for alleged embezzlement in the city of Kirov. However, he was released the following day pending affirmation from a higher court. The sentence was later suspended.
Image: Reuters
Anti-Kremlin platform grows
Despite being embroiled in legal troubles, Navalny was allowed to run in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election. A second-place finish behind Putin ally Sergei Sobyanin was seen as an overwhelming success and galvanized the Russian opposition movement.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Navalny takes to social media
His anti-Kremlin rhetoric led Navalny to be banned from appearing on Russian state-owned television. That forced him to deliver his political message over social media and his blog. His talent for public speaking, punchy use of language and humorous mockery of Putin and his loyalists mobilized a legion of young followers.
Image: Alexei Navalny/Youtube
Presidential ambitions
In December 2016, the opposition leader announced the formal start of his campaign to run for the Russian presidency in March 2018. However, repeated accusations of corruption, which his supporters say are politically motivated, ultimately barred him from running for public office.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/K. Kudryavtsev
Moscow's biggest protests in 6 years
In February 2017, anti-corruption rallies across dozens of Russian cities led to the arrests of over 1,000 demonstrators, including Navalny. The protests, believed to have been the largest in the Russian capital since 2012, were spurred by a report published by Navalny linking Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to a property empire valued at billions of euros. Navalny was released 15 days later.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Evgeny Feldman for Alexey Navalny's campaign
Physically assaulted
Navalny was assaulted and hospitalized in April 2017 after being hit in the eye with a chemical green dye. The attack permanently damaged his right cornea. Navalny accused Russian authorities of stopping him from seeking medical treatment abroad due to the embezzlement conviction against him. He was eventually permitted by the Kremlin human rights council to travel to Spain for eye surgery.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/E. Feldman
Repeated arrests
In 2018, Navalny was jailed for 30 days. After his release in September, he faced another 20-day stint. In April 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Russia had violated Navalny's rights by holding him under house arrest for most of 2014 during the Kirov embezzlement case.
Image: Reuters/M. Shemetov
Alleged poisoning
In July 2019, only weeks after being released from a 10-day jail sentence, Navalny was again jailed for 30 days for violating Russia's strict protest laws. The opposition leader accused Russia of poisoning him with an allergic agent while in jail.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/navalny.com
Raids and frozen assets
Using YouTube and social media, Navalny had amassed a following of millions by late December 2019. Then police raided his Anti-Corruption Foundation headquarters (pictured), detaining him in the process. His staff said officials wanted to confiscate their tech equipment. Just a few months later, in March, Navalny reported that his bank accounts and those of his family members had been frozen.
Image: Reuters/FBK Handout
A plane — and a coma
On August 20, Navalny's spokesperson announced the activist became violently ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing, and Navalny was rushed to a hospital in Russia's Omsk and later evacuated to Berlin's Charite clinic (pictured). Doctors said he was in a coma. Navalny's associates claimed he had been poisoned and pointed to previous attacks on the activist.
Image: Reuters/C. Mang
Back from the brink
Navalny was taken out of the coma less than three weeks later and was said to be responsive. Not long afterwards, he was posting on Instagram, saying he was slowly regaining strength following weeks of only being "technically alive." The German government said labs in France and Sweden both confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Navalny had promised to return to Russia and he did so, despite warnings that he would be arrested. He was taken into police custody shortly after arriving in Moscow. The dissident had said he was "not afraid of anything." He was ordered to spend two years and eight months in a penal colony for violating terms of his probation while recovering in Germany from his poisoning.
Image: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images
Further charges and years behind bars
Since being imprisoned in 2021, Navalny has faced even more charges and trials: in 2022, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court, charges his supporters say are fabricated. Appearing via video from prison during a court hearing this spring, Navalny said he was now being charged with new alleged crimes that would further extend his time in prison.
Image: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo/picture alliance
