TL;DR Navalniy and his team are imperialists. Coddling them is definitely not going to bring about change in russian society because they represent a “putin lite” option; no reason for the average russian to not choose the real thing. Any real change will require a recognition that genocidal imperialism is genuinely popular among russians (even though many outside of russia refuse to take sober attitude to any and all research on this issue, not to mention russians themselves) and hard decisions like active opposition to the current regime (not making youtube videos and hanging out at conferences in the West).

People in the West have a very superficial and naive understanding of russia and its society. There is no better example than the way Navalniy (and now his wife) are put on the pedestal.

Navalniy was a committed imperialist and racist. His organization has leveraged its unearned status in the West to gain financial support from russian oligarchs and even outright criminals. Navalniy himself supported the annexation of Crimea and russia’s invasion and de facto annexation of Georgian territories.

Navalniy’s about-turn on Crimea was largely driven by pragmatic necessity. His organization got completely kicked out of russia in 2022; it would be difficult for them to operate as an opposition in exile from foreign countries if they continued to support the annexation of Ukrainian territories.

The former director of Navalniy’s organization admitted as much in an interview to Time:

Many people ask, when Navalniy becomes President, what will he do with Crimea? And the question is not very easy. On one hand, the annexation of Crimea was a crime against Russian interests, a violation of international treaties, it caused sanctions, it caused isolation. On the other hand, unfortunately, the idea of the annexation of Crimea was so popular among many Russian voters between 2014 and 2021. Imagine any next President of Russia. If they were publicly advocating for the idea of giving Crimea back to Ukraine—before this war, they would probably be ousted. We hope the Russia of the future will be a democracy, and in a democracy, the opinion of the voters counts, and is important. And this created a very complicated puzzle for the next president. Well, now I believe that after this war, it’ll be very clear that in order to rebuild relations with Ukraine, to return to the civilized world, Russia will just have to do it. It will be clear for everyone that it was like the first of Putin’s crimes, very clearly connected with other painful crimes that he committed.

I will add that Volkov (the individual interviewed in Time) is a “former” director because he got caught working with a russian oligarch to leverage their organization for the benefit of the oligarch. That being said his resignation is largely theatrics, he continues to play a prominent role.

The “brotherly war” mentioned in the KI article is typical russian supremacist paternalism. The russians have been working on eliminating Ukrainian identity for centuries. No matter what their political system (Tsarism, communist, putinism) this has been a constant in russian policies. Why would Ukrainians ever consider them brothers?

The fact of the matter is that at least a strong majority of russians are genocidal imperialists that support the extermination of Ukrainian identity and the mass killing and torture of Ukrainians (among other ethno-national groups seeking self-determination from the russian imperialism and authoritarianism).

People in the west easily buy into rather primitive arguments about how the majority of russians don’t actually support genocidal imperialism and they are forced to go with it because they are afraid.

Let’s look at this claim on purely on the basis of logic (without referring to any external sources). No one denies that there is likely some level of falsification of publicly stated preferences (saying you support the invasion of Ukraine when you don’t actually do so), but on what basis can you make a claim that such preference falsification has any real impact on the broader picture? The mere existence of preference falsification is not incompatible with a strong majority of russians being genocidal imperialists.

And lo and behold, it turns out there are methods to estimate preference falsification. And with respect to the full scale invasion of Ukraine, preference falsification is relatively minor; resulting in delta of ~10%. 75% of russians state their support for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine with direct polling; adjusting this for preference falsification you get 65% support for the invasion of Ukraine. Using a similar approach for evaluating support for the annexation of Crimea shows an even clearer picture; even accounting for preference falsification you have around ~80% support for the annexation of Crimea, the first stage of the russian invasion of modern Ukraine.

And this is just Ukraine! The russians have been occupying Moldova since 1992 and have de facto annexed 20% of Georgia since 2008. In the 90’s they killed approximately 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya, in brutal targeted attacks. This would be comparable to 7.5 million russian civilians getting killed.

Have you ever heard Navalniy or any russian “opposition” figure talk (let alone apologize) about this? Of course not, because these issues are not in the forefront of Western discussions and they know that condemning their actions in Chechnya is equivalent to political suicide (even among those russians who consider themselves opposition leaning).

Even if you aren’t convinced by the above-mentioned points (and I find people in the “west” reflexively shy away from thinking too much about this), look at it from a pragmatic point of view. What have Navalniy and the russian “opposition” achieved in the past 15 years? Nothing! They are an abject, almost comical failure. Their leader died after a foolish return to russia, their organization is in exile and they have failed at every initiative they have ever launched. And yet they refuse to make any changes to their strategy.

Navalniy and his ilk will achieve nothing. Putin will stay in power for another 10-15 years until he dies and then someone comparable or worse will take power.

If one truly wants to create positive change in russia (and this goes for the russian opposition too), one has to recognize two things:

1. At the very least a strong majority of russians are genocidal imperialists. This is not some sort inherent quality or “imperialist gene” or anything stupid like that. It is a choice that russians make; a choice that can change, but it won’t change with the current aspirational approach and infantilization of russian society. No one is going to choose a “putin lite” when they have the real deal. You have to take a sober approach, which brings me to my second point.
2. The “have your cake and eat it approach” of pushing fairy tales about russians being victims of putin and being in a tough spot has been a complete failure. You need to speak the truth and recognize that russians need to let go of imperialist thinking (defending russian speakers abroad, brotherly nations). You need to take active measures to fight the regime, sabotage, assassination, support for russian military units fighting the russian state. Making dumb youtube videos about putin’s palace does not work.

That being said I highly doubt russians have the internal spirit to go make course correction.

The coddling of Navalniy and his goons by western politicians/society doesn’t make things any easier though.