Since people want to talk about Navalny – which I didn’t expect – I’ll explain my position regarding his anti-corruption work in Russia.
People think that Navalny was some sort of a fighter against the Putin regime but he never was. His only charges against Putin were that Putin stole money. And Putin’s charges against Navalny were that Navalny stole, too.
Everything Navalny did strengthened the regime. He trivialized Putin’s crimes, turning them into something insignificant. Russian people don’t mind that Putin has 14 castles. As long as he gives them what they want, he can have all the castles he needs. And he does give them exactly what they want: war, genocide, looting, rape, torture, and the resulting great self-esteem.
Navalny’s investigations were enormously helpful to the regime because you see them and you think, well, if this is the worst thing that Putin’s biggest opponents have on him, then he’s not that bad.
Voters anywhere on the planet don’t care that their politicians are rich and how those riches were acquired. Cf. Trump, Biden and Hillary Clinton supporters. It’s a commonplace in politics that voters will disregard a candidate’s wealth as long as they perceive an improvement in their own standard of living. Putin brought a marked improvement in the Russians’ standard of living. Do you know what regular Russians discuss the most in connection with the war in Ukraine? Domestic appliances. They are getting to loot a lot of domestic appliances. So now they live better because they have all those looted Ukrainian domestic appliances. Thanks to Putin.
If you didn’t have a flat-screen TV, and now you all of a sudden do, wouldn’t you be thankful to the politician who provided it for free, no matter how many yachts that politician had?
Putin is a moron. He’s a very, very stupid, uneducated, primitive person. That’s why he killed Navalny instead of continuing to use him to whitewash the regime.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yes, white-collar workers could order takeout and go to Egypt under Putin in the naughts, that was a huge improvement. However, we also saw (and I seem to recall you also posted) those side-by-side images of Russian and Ukrainian villages, where the Russian side has no roads, no infrastructure, and the Ukrainian side has nice, clean houses and streets. Stealing appliances because Putin made them live better? That doesn’t seem to square with the rest of your analysis. Navalny showed where the infrastructure money went, into palaces and golden toilets for Putin. He also did an amazing investigation with Grozev into the secret institute that poisoned him, uncovering their assassination practices.
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People with no roads and toilets can’t understand the argument about infrastructure. They don’t know this word. People in deep Russia despise Navalny. He was the hero of urban hipsters but nobody else.
And look, what are we arguing about? We can all see very well that there have been no protests in Russia regarding Navalny’s death. People are mocking him and celebrating. Nothing was achieved by all these investigations.
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“the hero of urban hipsters”
And important to the type of russian young adult who left russia but never really openly condemns the war or takes part in any demonstrations.
I think they projected ‘maybe a good tsar’ feelings on him as opposed to ‘bad tsar’ feelings for putin.
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Brutal and sad, but that’s where we are, right now.
If only people understood how sentimental Russians are, how cheerfully they go about the business of killing while at the same time tearfully claiming that “they have to do it”, then people might start to get a glimpse of the so-called “Russian soul”. It’s a very dark place.
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