Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Alexei Navalny, took to the main stage of the Munich Security Conference this Friday three hours after the Russian penitentiary services reported the death of her husband in prison. She wore a dark suit, glassy eyes, but whole in her gesture and voice, she spoke for a few minutes after receiving deep applause from the audience, full of political, military and diplomatic leaders. “I want Putin and his people to know that they will be punished for what they have done to our country and to my family. They will be brought to justice. That day will come soon,” she said.
Navalnaya spoke those words on the same stage in which Vladimir Putin, in 2007, articulated a brutal speech that has gone down in history, in which he came to the West to say that he rejected the current global order, in which he de facto claimed spheres of influence for a Russia that he had stabilized, in which he vented his discontent and warned of what would gradually happen if The West did not give in. The West did not give in, it opened the door of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia. Soon came the invasion of Georgia in 2008, then that of Ukraine in 2014, the operation in Syria in 2015, the large-scale war against Kiev in 2022. All, hand in hand with an incessant spiral of internal repression, of which the Navalnaya's husband, Alexei Navalny, has been one of the main objects. The external and internal leg of the reconstruction project of Russia as a great power based on the ruthless use of force.
“I am sure that, in my place, at this moment Alexei would have decided to get on this stage. I don't know if we should believe the terrible news that we receive only from official media. For many years, they have lied constantly. But if it's the truth, I want Putin and his team to know that they will be punished for what they have done to our country and to my family. They will be brought to justice. That day will come soon. “I call on the entire international community to unite, fight this evil, this horrible regime,” said the opponent's wife.
The list is long, from the journalist Anna Politkvoskaia to the politician Boris Nemtsov. The repression, the strangulation of the fragile democracy that was trying to take root after the fall of the USSR, is visible to all, with brutal episodes. Western leaders came out to express their rejection of the news. Just before Navalnaya, Kamala Harris, vice president of the United States, had spoken on the same stage, criticizing Putin's brutality. Many others expressed themselves in similar terms.
Divided international community
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But the international community Navalnaya addressed is divided. A large majority of countries condemned the invasion of Ukraine at the UN, but only fifty have imposed sanctions on Putin's regime. It is a fragmented world, in which democratic quality is eroding, in which the attractiveness of that idea seems to be waning, and in which poles are being configured that do not seem to be altered by the death of a heroic opponent.
Authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are closing ranks. Westerners and the democracies of Asia-Pacific, too, among themselves, but they fail to strengthen ties with the rest of the world. The countries of the global south, a heterogeneous group that includes regimes of various types, substantially refuse to align, take positions, focused on defending certain interests, such as obtaining fair compensation for environmental damage caused by others.
Not long after Putin's famous speech, in 2008, the West suffered the terrible financial crisis, with its consequences in the subsequent years of popular discontent, the rise of populist proposals, dysfunction or outright paralysis of political systems, including the most representative among them, United States. In this context, the large authoritarian regimes felt emboldened to take the fight; others, more motivated to maintain an equidistance.
That is the audience to which Yulia Navalnaya addressed, one in which the driving force of the idea of democracy is waning. Russia embodies the most direct and brutal challenge to that idea. In the same scenario, Putin warned that he wanted to change the world order and, years later, he would sign joint statements with Xi Jinping stating that democracy and human rights are relative concepts, which can be declined in different ways depending on the history and culture of each nation. .
Will more countries align with what Navalnaya's speech in Munich represents in 2024? Or with what Putin's speech in Munich in 2007 represents? The answer will define the fate of the 21st century.
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