Is the Enemy of Your Enemy Really Your Friend?
Alexei Navalny has been the subject of headlines worldwide since his dramatic poisoning with Novichok last summer. The return of who many term Russia’s de facto leader of the opposition to Moscow, his immediate arrest, and subsequent sentencing would typically have been enough to dominate the headlines. But his simultaneous release of a video detailing the massive corruption network around Vladimir Putin and scheme to build an enormous palace on the Black Sea, watched over 110 million times so far, has sparked protests across Russia in defiance of the threat of arrest, as well as plunging temperatures.
Huge attention has, quite rightly, been paid to Navalny’s anti-corruption stance and his refusal to stay quiet despite genuine threats to his life. Nevertheless, in former Soviet countries such as Ukraine, Navalny is known for having views with which many take issue. Western media has paid remarkably little attention to this, preferring to present him as a simplified, idealised hero of liberal democracy. Even Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs recently stated in regard to Navalny that, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’. But should Navalny’s opposition to corruption mean that we forgo any critique of his views? And should the attention on him overshadow other human rights issues in the region?
The world’s media is brimming with hyperbolic remarks on Navalny. The Guardian writes of his ‘extraordinary courage, charisma and social media tactics’, and how he ‘has put his life on the line in the battle for Russian democracy’. He has even been compared to Nelson Mandela. Certainly, his bravery is undeniable, and his investigation into corruption is admirable. But this admiration should not come at the cost of glossing over his nationalist, even neo-imperialist views and apparent endorsement of prejudices.
By Bestalex - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99200127
One aspect of Navalny’s political outlook that is a cause for concern, and yet is rarely mentioned in UK media, is his attitude towards migrants. In 2007, he recorded a pro-gun rights video in which he appeared to compare those from the North Caucasus area to ‘cockroaches’, and he even pretended to shoot one. This wasn’t a standalone incident: he also recorded a video in the same year dressed as a dentist, in which he implied that migrants are comparable to rotten teeth which need to be removed. His anti-migrant rhetoric would be easier to dismiss if he appeared to regret his stance at all. On the contrary, he has repeatedly refused to apologise for his remarks, stating in a Guardian interview in 2017 that he did not regret his choice of language, and that his comparison of migrants to cockroaches was ‘artistic licence’. Moreover, he was expelled from the liberal Yabloko party in 2007 for his nationalist views. So why do we almost never hear of this side of him in Western coverage of events?
To compound this, Navalny’s apparent endorsement of the trope of a ‘Russian World’ suggests that he harbours neo-imperialist sympathies. He has supported the independence of Russian-backed breakaway regions in former Soviet countries and supported Russia’s war against Georgia in 2008. His remarks on the Russian occupation of Ukraine have become infamous: in a 2014 interview, when asked whether he would return Crimea to Ukraine if he became president, he retorted, ‘Is Crimea some sort of sausage sandwich to be passed back and forth? I don’t think so’. So, no matter how strong his anti-corruption stance is, he does not necessarily represent a refreshingly liberal hope for Russia.
Of course, there is the argument that fear of political repression could have made him hesitant to recognise Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but given his willingness to forego his own safety for concerns like corruption, this does not seem likely. Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, recently returned to the sandwich analogy when asked for his stance on Navalny’s arrest, stating that if Navalny leads Russia, ‘the sandwich will have to be returned, fresh and in a good state’. Sandwiches aside, Navalny’s nationalism demonstrates views which in most countries would put him on the far-right of the political spectrum, never mind how against corruption he may be.
Instagram, @navalny
Navalny’s reaction to the decision of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to break away from Russian control in 2018 offers yet another example of perpetuating the idea of a ‘Russian World’, seen by many as undermining states’ cultural and political independence. He tweeted at the time that, ‘What took centuries to create has been destroyed by Putin and his idiots in four years. Putin is the enemy of the Russian World’. This is rather telling: rather than choosing to criticise Putin for not recognising Ukraine’s right to independence, Navalny chose to attack him for not maintaining Russia’s influence over the country.
This darker side to Navalny’s views makes the implications for his domination of the headlines even more troubling when other widespread human rights abuses in Eastern Europe go unnoticed by the world’s media. The human rights situation in Belarus is far from improving, and yet its conspicuous absence in UK media for the past couple of months could make you think otherwise. The contrast between the coverage of the ongoing violence against protestors in Belarus and the attention lavished on Navalny individually is substantial. This is not to suggest that the arrest of a prominent opponent to the president of the world’s largest country should be ignored by the media. But why don’t Belarus or Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine get the same level of coverage as Navalny? This is even echoed on the level of international organisations: at a recent session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a debate on Navalny’s arrest was prioritised, while there was no time for the proposed debate on the human rights situation in Belarus. We are in the middle of a vicious cycle, in which limited media space for Eastern Europe fuels a Russo-centric narrative which often excludes struggles faced by other countries, such as Belarus and Ukraine, thus failing to provide international scrutiny and pressure on leaders like Lukashenko.
This just goes to show that, as much as Navalny’s anti-corruption stance merits attention and admiration, this should not mean that we paint him as a liberal figure that he is not. Challenging corruption is only one element of what he stands for, and yet the world’s media consistently fails to present the more complex nature of his views. Changing this does not mean opposing Navalny on all accounts; on the contrary, the pressure that he puts on Putin and the possibilities of change that he brings are to be welcomed. It just means we should be willing to see him in more nuanced terms, rather than a heroic defender of liberalism. The idea that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ only perpetuates the tendency to simplify Navalny’s views. It is therefore critical to bear in mind that opposition in politics rarely works on the basis of a binary, and that, even if Navalny represents an improvement on Putin’s autocratic tendencies, this does not automatically render him Putin’s antithesis.
