Sorry, of course, for citing the "newspaper" *Izvestia*, but this is an absolutely magnificent piece that you really have to read.
This has everything. From "banal... oh, I mean, sorry, Navalny" to "his handlers from Yale University confused Russia with a third-world country". And of course the wonderfully candid "well, he shouldn’t have taunted the authorities". At the same time, Major General Markin, even in a special interview devoted to the "Navalny case," demonstrates that they themselves are already confused about exactly what charge the Investigative Committee is fabricating the case under. Long ago, I supposedly "forced them to sell at a price several million rubles below market," and now, according to the Investigative Committee, I’m the head of a criminal group that stole the entire volume of sales. In any case, I won’t be able to respond more vividly, more concisely, or more accurately than one fellow citizen of Markin’s boss responded to Interior Ministry officers, so I won’t respond at all. Here is the full interview: 1*On April 7, proceedings will begin in the Leninsky District Court of Kirov in the criminal case concerning the embezzlement of 16 million rubles (about $500,000 at the time), in which the main defendants are the well-known opposition figure Alexei Navalny and Pyotr Ofitserov, CEO of Vyatka Timber Company LLC. Thanks to Navalny’s opposition activities, this trial is already attracting attention not only in Russia but also in the West. In an exclusive interview with Izvestia, Vladimir Markin, head of the Investigative Committee’s media relations department, spoke about the "political motivation" behind the criminal prosecution of Alexei Navalny and why the blogger will never become a "Russian Mandela." —** Why was Navalny’s case handled by the Investigative Committee rather than the Interior Ministry? ** — It’s a fair question, because the case itself does not merit such interest. Lawyers, as is well known, have certain guarantees under the law, including that criminal cases against them can only be initiated at the level of the Investigative Committee of Russia. This is in the interests of both society and the accused. —** If so, isn’t the public resonance connected to political motives in opening a case against a well-known opposition figure? ** — Politics is present in this case exclusively because of the figure and actions of the accused. On the investigators’ side, there is only the execution of the Criminal Procedure Code in connection with the discovered facts of abuse. If it were not for Navalny’s obsessive politicization, there would be no politics in the case at all. On the contrary, everyone, including the opposition, would be pleased that yet another crook had been exposed. —** But if Navalny were not involved, then presumably there would be no case? ** — Perhaps it would not have appeared so soon, because the number and capacity of investigators are, unfortunately, limited. It might have taken longer for them to get around to an ordinary embezzlement-and-kickback case. B*ut if the person involved does everything possible to draw attention to himself—one might even say taunts the authorities, as if to say, look at me, all dressed in white against the general background—then interest in his past increases, and the process of exposing him naturally speeds up. * —** Why would he want that—to attract the attention of the Investigative Committee specifically? ** — It’s hard to say for sure. T*here is a suspicion that at Yale University, or wherever they train political cadres for developing countries, they simply got confused and mistook Russia for Georgia or some other third-world country. It is unlikely that his handlers did not know criminal prosecution was probable. In other words, they were counting on exactly this kind of reaction: look, they’re persecuting a truth-seeker who speaks bluntly and fearlessly. * —** But Alexei really did earn that reputation. Maybe in that case it wasn’t worth prosecuting him? ** — His reputation is debatable. If you look closely, Navalny-branded resources parasitize the state mechanisms that actually function. The primary thing is still the legally mandated disclosure of information about public procurement on government websites; all the rest of the PR built on that is secondary. But I am not entitled to judge how honest the accused’s political PR is. Our job is to open a criminal case and bring it to court if there are facts and evidence. If we had not done that, then that would have been selective political treatment. We open cases against deputies too, so why should a street opposition activist have some kind of immunity? J*ust because someone in the West speaks up for him? That may be possible in some weak country, but not in Russia. We are, after all, a world power. * —** Still, could you explain in more detail what exactly he is accused of? ** — Alas, but the utterly banal (the respondent misspoke. — Izvestia), sorry, I mean Navalny, is accused of an extremely banal abuse of office. Our investigators in the regions deal with this fraudulent scheme all the time. Using his status as an adviser, he forced the director of a state-owned enterprise to sell timber to an intermediary at a price several million rubles below market. So they came up with nothing original. It’s all very banal and boring. — Won’t it turn out that a convicted Navalny becomes the banner of the opposition, a Russian Mandela? ** — Perhaps that was exactly the calculation of those who promoted Navalny, knowing the sins of his youth. But Mandela was imprisoned not for abuses while serving as an adviser to those in power, but for fighting apartheid. And besides, in Russia we have already had politicians who served time for extremism rather than theft—Limonov, for example. But even he could not become a banner for the entire opposition, only for a small sect. — Why not, on the contrary, make use of Navalny’s experience in fighting corruption? ** — No one is stopping him from engaging in public activity. E*ven in the penal colony, many convicts write letters and petitions and fight the shortcomings of the system. So that experience may come in handy there too. I believe Navalny’s public activity did bring some benefit, because he needed to earn a reputation as a fighter. Although, of course, the criminal case added even more to his notoriety in the crime pages. When and if guilt is proven in court, the court may objectively assess the convict’s merits and personality, his public character references; some well-known public figures may vouch for him, saying that he will no longer swindle and steal. In that case, a punishment not involving imprisonment is possible. In any event, it is for the court to choose an appropriate sentence, while the investigators have done their job as required by law.