Russia starts to believe Vladimir Putin is not the only option

In Alexei Navalny, Russians can begin to see a viable substitute for Putin. Change isn’t round the corner, but is down the road.

Protesters face off against police in protests in Moscow on Sunday. Picture: Reuters.

Russia is not on the cusp of a revolution. But protests over the past ten days suggest that a sizeable chunk of society is deeply unhappy with its leaders.

These rallies can be exhilarating – marching shoulder to shoulder with like-minded people, chanting “Russia will be free” and feeling like they are on the brink of some kind of victory. There is a strong camaraderie as they dodge the batons. Alexei Navalny’s words as he headed to jail are ringing in their ears: “I am not afraid, and I call on you to not be afraid.”

But the truth is that the Kremlin still holds many cards. There are no cracks in the military or security apparatus; rally numbers are not critical; parliamentary opposition to President Putin’s rule is long crushed; and the foreign response is too feeble to make officials and their business pals, such as the billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, fear for their Tuscan villas and Knightsbridge mansions. Rotenberg has said that he is the true owner of the so-called Putin palace, with suspicions that he is covering for his old friend.

The lavish ‘palace’ on the Black Sea which Alexei Navalny claims belongs to Vladimir Putin. Picture: AFP.

Putin is past caring about global condemnation. A leader whose security services act with carelessness or brazenness – or both – while trying to assassinate his fiercest critic (Navalny) or a double agent in Britain (Sergei Skripal) is not embarrassed about cracking a few heads in Moscow.

But longer term the Kremlin has a problem. Surveys indicate almost half of people at recent protests were attending for the first time. A poll of 446 at yesterday’s (Sunday’s) rally in St Petersburg found 76 per cent were under 35, and almost 40 per cent under 25.

That suggests that well over a third of protesters were small children when Putin took charge in 2000, or were born and have lived all their lives under his rule.

Putin relied on the mantras of “stability” and “we can’t go back to poverty and chaos” in the oil boom years. Now the economy is fragile and the spectre of the 1990s is meaningless to teenagers and twenty-somethings.

Ultimately what will decide Russia’s fate is the silent majority who were convinced there was no alternative to Putin. As the Moscow correspondent of Germany’s Der Spiegel, Christian Esch, noted: “A learnt helplessness of the population is the most powerful resource of Putinism.”

Yet that looks vulnerable. At one time the Kremlin could largely neuter Navalny by keeping him off state television and preventing him from taking part in elections, or pretending he did not exist. He is now part of the mainstream. In him, Russians could begin to see a viable substitute for Putin, 68.

Change is not around the corner. But surely it is down the road.

The Times