Stealth Tactics
By: Luisa Hill
Tags: Navalny, Democracy, Putin, Russia, Protest

As Western electoral systems rift, Russia provides valuable lessons in the excruciating fight for democracy.

“I heard bones break when they hit the asphalt.” We’re on Mars Field, a classic backdrop of protests in St Petersburg. Valentin was arrested at one of them. He and a friend were swept by the crowd onto a bridge and stood by the railing, watching the demonstration unfold, when police in riot gear formed tight circles around hundreds of demonstrators. They were herded and shoved into city buses.

It felt like they were trying to get as many people as possible far away from the protest. On his phone, he shows me pictures of the newest crowd-control vehicles unveiled by the Russian police force, huge mechanical shields that can be driven into groups of people.

Buses full of frightened citizens sped through the city. When they slowed around a corner, some of the younger captives managed to wrench open the doors and jump out, landing hard on the road. Valentin isn’t sure if they managed to run away, or if a police car rounded them up.

The demonstrators were brought to a remote police station in the far south of the city, where they were told to wait several long hours before being questioned.

“During the interrogation, they tried to get us to admit attending a protest, or to mention Putin. We kept to our statement: we were standing on the bridge.” Penalties for attending protests can be steep, especially for repeat offenders. Valentin didn’t attend his hearing, but it seems the charges were dropped, since he hasn’t heard from the courts in over a year. He guesses they decided to convict at random, maybe every second or third arrest.

He was detained at the demonstration against the pension age increase. But at root they’re all about corruption. The steady funnelling of money away from the public, combined with incompetent governance, has throttled perspectives for young Russians. The grievances I overhear from friends make it sound like the internal market is steadily approaching a barter economy, except the lack of trust between individuals means everyday business is a painful matter. The embargo hit St Petersburg hard, with its reliance on its Baltic port to Europe.

St Petersburg, 2018

“I used to not mind waiting those two hours at night when the bridges open and roads close in the city,” they like to joke. “At least the ships brought good cheese. Now, though…”

Now, food in supermarkets is of considerably lower quality, and more military ships dock on the Neva.

Most major demonstrations are mobilised by Alexei Navalny, figurehead of Russia’s anti-corruption opposition. Just like the event at which Valentin was arrested, which had been registered with authorities. Demonstrators arrived at the approved square, only to find that a construction site had popped up overnight, the square barricaded and dug up, forcing throngs of people onto adjoining roads not designated for the demonstration. This is where arrests happen.

There has recently been a new wave of protests across Russian cities in the lead-up to the municipal elections, a response to the extremely complicated process of registering candidates. Deliberately complex, it enables officials to easily disqualify candidates; only occasional opposition candidates are deemed not to pose a genuine threat to existing powers. Fresh out of prison, Navalny called for these latest protests after many of his opposition candidates were rejected at the registration process.

The upper levels of the Russian administration are, of course, saturated by officials loyal to Putin. On the municipal level, however, there is still some hope for fledgling candidates. It is easy to fake polling outcomes when it comes to high positions. On the municipal level, meanwhile, there are around 100 positions up for grabs in large cities like Moscow and St Petersburg.

Opposition leader Navalny is encouraging tactical voting to keep Putin’s influence somewhat at bay in local politics: his team of analysts advise citizens on who to vote for based on their location. The response of the ruling party, United Russia, is to flood the election with fake ‘independent’ candidates in attempts to confuse voters.

A week before election day, a flyer arrives in St Petersburg’s postboxes. It is divided into six segments and each displays a candidate. The matching description under each picture introduces them as a team of six affiliated independents. The back of each candidate’s segment states that the respective candidate covered exactly one sixth of the flyer’s printing and distribution costs. It is difficult to understand what this homogenous ‘team of independents’ stands for. What is evident is its role to confuse the electorate, to thwart tactical voting. The flyer’s branding is notably similar in style and colour to that of United Russia; this is United Russia incognito.

Democracy now becomes a matter of stealth. Given the systemic lack of transparency — it’s common for fake candidates to stand as a result of secret deals and allegiances — Navalny’s team initially planned to reveal who to vote for only on the actual day of the election, in order to thwart counter-strategies planting candidates in the lead-up.

This strategy proved too risky, however: not enough people may bother going to the polls if political messaging is on stand-by. Instead, Navalny’s team programmed a Telegram bot to keep the decision as simple as possible for potential opposition voters. Type your address into the chat and the bot responds with a list of safe candidates.

In their most recent attack on Navalny, the Russian authorities have used charges of money laundering to freeze his bank accounts and those of his closest affiliates, including family members — an ironic accusation against the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. By now a trusty regular at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Navalny immediately filed this latest violation. Frozen bank accounts force Navalny’s team to rely on blockchain currencies and a range of sympathetic sponsors. By the time the ECHR hears his case, it’s likely he’ll already have faced a new show trial in Russia, accusing him of illegitimate use of funds.

Federal Security Service, St Petersburg

Tech has assisted oppositional discourse and coordination. Official Russian media outlets do not cover civil unrest beyond derisive remarks that sideline young demonstrators; it has been noted that Putin never publicly mentions Alexei Navalny by name. Messaging groups share information about ongoing protests throughout the vast state, disseminating videos of police violence. Demonstrators update one another about barricaded streets and blocked underground exits, intel scouted the night before a scheduled event. Telegram, a messaging app developed by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, is gaining popularity in the West too as a reputedly private alternative to Whatsapp. Unlike the Durov’s other platform VK, the Russian Facebook, Telegram has, as of yet, managed to steer clear of control by the Federal Security Service, the Russian internal intelligence agency executing wide-scale online surveillance and notorious anti-terrorism operations. Nevertheless, security concerns about Telegram’s encryption policy prevail.

Despite these alternative channels, it is difficult to sense public opinion, the elusive majority, and easy to feel isolated in Russia. Valentin tells me that he was comforted by how normal his fellow detainees seemed. “I made friends with a mother and her son. They attended the protest together.”

An evening stroll takes us to a Soviet memorial to the 1941 blockade of the city, which caused a famine that had people falling dead in the streets. The colossal monument stands on a roundabout circled by major ring-roads leading in and out of St Petersburg. Large flames in a stone basin and Monday rush hour cast an orange glow on the bronze citizens pointing heroically down the highway. We notice that the lanes leading from the airport are eerily empty. Traffic all around us is at a standstill. Lanes in all other directions are congested with unmoving cars. Valentin explains to me that it’s common for public officials to clear entire roads when they get around. Inside the foggy windows of a bus, I can see tired faces sunk into winter coats, and I wonder out loud which official it might be this time. Who would block St Petersburg’s evening traffic for this long? Putin himself?

Cars start to honk at the blue lights flashing in their way, but everything remains motionless. After a rumbling ten minutes interspersed with beeps, the first tinted vehicles come down the empty road. At last, approaching us at a leisurely pace, the motorcade. It’s impossible to tell which one he might be in. The honking becomes deafening; I feel sure that every car, bus and truck joins in the uproar when the black vans and blue lights cruise past us towards the city centre.

(St Petersburg, 2019)