Russia’s Opposition, Barred From Moscow Vote, Looks Elsewhere for Gains

Wall Street Journal - Russia’s Opposition, Barred From Moscow Vote, Looks Elsewhere for Gains

Putin’s opponents hope a wave of dissent will carry them past a crackdown and their own discord.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, greeting protesters in Moscow in July, has backed a strategy of running as many opposition candidates as possible in elections Sunday.

By Thomas Grove and Ann M. Simmons

Updated September 6, 2019

MOSCOW—Targeted by police and barred from the ballot in Moscow’s city elections, Russia’s opposition is trying to gain a political foothold in other municipal races Sunday as it rides a rising wave of dissent against President Vladimir Putin.

But to convert a surge in support into a coherent political challenge to Mr. Putin, opposition leaders must first overcome a crackdown against them, and their own internal divisions.

The push for a voice in local politics offers Russia’s loose opposition coalition an opportunity to indicate the breadth of its popular backing.

The United Democrats, as the alliance is known, have registered more than 400 candidates in districts in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city and Mr. Putin’s hometown, and supports candidates in six other cities across the country.

The Russian opposition held protests in Moscow for weeks after officials refused to allow several activists on the city ballot.

Russian officers detain opposition figure Lyubov Sobol in Moscow on Aug. 10.

Lyubov Sobol took part in an opposition rally in Moscow on Aug. 31 after ending a month-long hunger strike.

Police detained a protester in Moscow in August, as Russian authorities intensified a crackdown on opposition activists.

Attempting to inject a wider range of views into city politics, the alliance aims to build on anti-government demonstrations in Moscow this summer that drew the biggest crowds in nearly a decade.

“The momentum is just beginning for us,” said the opposition’s Lyubov Sobol, a would-be candidate who went on a month-long hunger strike that lasted into mid-August after election authorities denied her application to run for Moscow’s city council.

Arrests and legal actions are threatening to sap the momentum, however, as are opposition leaders’ conflicting strategies.

Some activists oppose participation in the municipal elections, calling for more street protests instead. Others, such as protest leader Alexei Navalny, have put their weight behind fielding as many candidates as possible. Mr. Navalny was barred from registering to run in last year’s presidential election, and isn’t competing for a seat on the Moscow city council.

The rift in the opposition has alienated some supporters who want the movement to take a common stand.

Opposition politicians have been denied a nationwide platform for years, with some being arrested or even killed. Local elections have been seen as the last remaining outlet for competitive politics in Russia.

In 2017, the opposition won a sizable victory in Moscow municipal elections, and last year several Kremlin-backed gubernatorial candidates suffered rare defeats in regional races.

“Going local and regional is good because it helps the opposition broaden its reach and debunks the regime’s portrait of the opposition as spoiled Muscovites unrepresentative of the ‘real narod’,” or ordinary people, said Virginie Lasnier, a political-science research fellow at the University of Montreal.

But city elections like the centerpiece ballot in Moscow are being pushed off limits for the opposition as the Kremlin addresses this chink in its armor.

“Even that vulnerability must be closed,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder and CEO of political analysis firm R. Politik.

The run-up to Sunday’s vote became a lightning rod for protesters in mid-July after city officials in Moscow refused the candidacies of several important antigovernment activists. The demonstrations snowballed into weeks of rallies and street marches, some drawing as many as 50,000 people.

The Moscow electoral commission barred opposition candidates it says failed to collect enough legitimate signatures to be placed on the council ballot—a claim the protesters deny. Last month, a Moscow court reversed a decision to ban opposition candidate Sergey Mitrokhin of the Yabloko Party from Sunday’s election, a rare concession that followed the weeks of protests.

Opposition leaders say they believe they have galvanized a sizable segment of Russian society that has grown frustrated with declining living standards. Support for Mr. Putin has weakened at home despite his success abroad at helping to re-establish Russia’s claim to be a world power.

The Russian government, in public comments, shrugged off the protests, suggesting they speak to the country’s democratic credentials. Mr. Putin said during an investment forum in Vladivostok on Thursday that sometimes protests can have results by shaking up power, but that “things should be done within the framework of the law.”

The government response on the ground has been less muted. Authorities have deployed armed riot police and filed legal cases against more than a dozen opposition leaders. Five people have been convicted and sentenced to prison on charges relating to protests, including one man who was given a three-year sentence for allegedly hitting a police officer’s helmet.

The crackdown is intended to scare people away from joining demonstrations or supporting the opposition, analysts said.

The authorities’ attempts to stifle the opposition are becoming more intense and brutal, said Andrei Kolesnikov, chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“They choose repression as one of the main tools,” Mr. Kolesnikov said. “Before that they tried to use propaganda. Right now, they are openly repressive. It’s kind of a new station of development of our authoritarian regime.”

Sergei Chemezov, the head of arms conglomerate Rostec who worked alongside Mr. Putin in the KGB in East Germany, recently spoke in defense of the opposition in a leading Russian media outlet. His remarks prompted opposition leaders and Russia-watchers to wonder how high support for the protests goes.

“We see there is some internal resistance including among figures who are close to Putin,” said Ms. Stanovaya at R. Politik.

“The regime is weakening and the nonsystemic opposition will grow stronger,” Ms. Stanovaya said, referring to opposition forces that operate outside of politics. “People are taking that into account.”

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com