Navalnists’ attempt to “play Belarus” failed
The protests of supporters of the liberal blogger Alexei Navalny that took place last Saturday in a number of Russian cities will not become large-scale.
Political experts interviewed by Kommersant stated this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Thus, according to political scientist Konstantin Kostin, judgments about the greater activity of the regions compared to past actions are greatly exaggerated:
“The geography of protests has not changed over the past five years. Traditionally, activity is higher in Siberia and the Far East. This time, perhaps, only Perm surprised me,” says the expert.
According to him, the serialization of such actions is unlikely.
“An outburst of negativity has occurred, but no serious political program is visible. The attempt to play Belarus on the part of the non-systemic opposition is obvious, but so far this is not a very working strategy,” Kostin believes.
In turn, Mikhail Vinogradov believes that in general the scenario on January 23 was similar to the actions of 2017.
“Significant regional coverage, powerful emotional outburst, vivid anti-government memes, clashes with law enforcement officers. But at the same time, the participants do not understand how to transform an outburst of emotion into a political result. There is no such strategy yet; even with regular events, there is a risk that the result will not be higher than in Khabarovsk and Minsk,” notes Vinogradov.
He calls the split in the elite the key sign of turbulence in Russia, but admits that so far there is no talk of it.
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