Russian hopes for freedom and democracy died with Navalny

That’s according to the Globe & Mail’s “Chief Internet Correspondent” Mark MacKinnon, writing in today’s paper. Alexei Navalny was never anywhere near as popular in Russia as Western media made him out to be. His popularity peaked during his run for the mayorship of Moscow in 2013, where he finished a distant second to the incumbent. With the exception of a brief period following his alleged poisoning in 2022, Navalny’s approval rating hovered in the range of 2-6%. Putin’s approval rating today is in the mid-80s. The idea that Putin feared losing to Navalny in a free and fair election is pure propagandistic piffle spread by anti-Putin media in the West. Navalny initially drew attention to himself as an outspoken critic of Muslim immigration to Russia. He compared Muslims to cockroaches and recommended their extermination. His rantings were those of a typical “white nationalist.” In Canada his anti-immigrant speeches would be considered hate crimes. Nevertheless, he caught the eye of important people in the West, and soon found himself at Yale University as a Yale World Fellow, there to mingle with other aspiring world leaders being groomed for service to the American Empire. It was after his return to Russia from Yale that we began to read his name regularly in Western media. “He was everything Putin was not,” according to MacKinnon, “he was tall, handsome, and comfortable addressing the crowds of ordinary Russians the diminutive Mr. Putin does not.” How a leader can maintain an 85% approval rating without the support of “ordinary Russians” is a mystery MacKinnon does not explore. Instead, he paints a picture of a Putin so afraid of Navalny that “his funeral was predictably ignored by Kremlin-controlled media.” Except it wasn’t. Here’s funeral coverage at Kremlin-controlled Russia Today. And here’s the story at TASS. That’s some mighty sloppy work from the Globe’s Senior Internet Correspondent! The only hopes that died with Navalny were the hopes of his Western backers that their boy would prove a viable alternative to Putin.