Vladimir Putin speaks often, and at length, about conservative values. Europe and the US want to impose their debauched and godless ways on us, he tells Russians, to frighten them and to justify a standoff against “the collective west”. On the subject of the war, he expounds that only the Russian army can save Ukrainian schoolchildren from “gender-neutral toilets”. His electoral manifesto places a heavy emphasis on the family as the basis of Russian society, and on his commitment to tradition and religious belief.
All this rhetoric is pure hypocrisy. Conservative discourse is, for Putin, no more than a political tool for manipulating the consciousness of the populace. The reality is that the Russian president leads an immoral life, wholly contrary to the values he purports to embody.
Putin claims to be a man of faith who partakes in Christian rituals. The reality is that he has started a bloody war in eastern Europe, a war in which Christians are killing other Christians.
He claims to be the defender of family life. In reality, he is a man who has publicly distanced himself from his own daughters, and when he mentions them to the press, it’s as “those women”.
Putin’s hypocrisy is obvious; next to him, Alexei Navalny appeared as a much more holistic, balanced person, one who was grounded in conservatism in the sane, normal sense of the word.
I knew Alexei for 23 years; we were friends, and I know his family well. I can attest that he truly was a man of faith, for whom the commandments “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal”, and the ethical precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, were not the mere trappings of religion, but became a lodestar for his life and his politics. I can say with certainty that unlike Putin, Alexei was a true family man, too: a loving son, husband and father. His family life, based on love and mutual respect, was always for me a source of admiration.
The pressure that the Russian government and intelligence agencies brought to bear on Alexei’s family is well documented. His brother, Oleg, was arrested and effectively held hostage for three and a half years. Alexei’s Moscow flat and his parents’ home were routinely searched. His children were spied on, his daughter, Dasha, regularly trailed to school by plainclothes agents of the Russian federal security service, the FSB.
His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, used to tell journalists that Putin apparently saw their family as Alexei’s weak spot (possibly thinking of his own). Then she’d explain that Putin was wrong; on the contrary, his family was for Alexei his main source of support, a wellspring of strength and inspiration. Yulia herself was not just his steadfast wife, but also a key political adviser, whose opinion he always took into consideration.
His family remains Alexei’s source of strength even now that he has perished in prison. Yulia never had independent aspirations, nor intended a political career for herself. But by killing Alexei, Putin left her no choice – and she has seized the banner of struggle.
I suspect that Putin is prone to chauvinism and will hardly take a woman seriously as an opponent. But he doesn’t know Yulia very well, and soon, I’m sure, he will realise his mistake.
As for me, I wish Yulia Navalnaya every success, and will be rooting for her, if only from behind bars.
Translated from Russian by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse
Ilya Yashin is a Russian opposition politician, and was a close ally of Alexei Navalny. He was the leader of the People’s Freedom party. In 2022 he was charged with spreading false information after reporting on the Russian military’s war crimes in Bucha, and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison
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