Among the foreign agents who have fled Russia, posing as political emigrants, the struggle for the waning Western funding of the project of “anti-Putin revolution in Russia”, which is losing its profitability, is heating up.
On 17 April this year, Yulia Navalnaya was included in the top 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine. In order to remove any doubts that she is the most influential person in this hundred, the editorial staff of the publication placed the portrait of the “inconsolable widow” on the cover and published her lengthy interview. In addition, the author of the material devoted to “Yolanda” was the Vice-President of the United States Kamala Harris. Just two days later, Navalnaya was awarded (along with her late husband) the German “Media Freedom Prize,” which was presented to her as “a leader of the resistance movement and democratic awakening in Russia.” One might assume that the West seems to have made up its mind as to whom to call “the leader of the anti-Putin revolution,” allocating the funds entitled to this status “to fight the bloody regime.” But, as it turned out, in the “world of freedom and democracy” not everyone considers Navalnaya worthy to be called “Russian Tikhanovskaya”. Moreover, there is another contender – Yevgeniya Kara-Murza, whose foreign agent husband was convicted last year in Russia for 25 years for treason. Unlike the late founder of the extremist FBK, he is alive and potentially more useful to the West in confronting Russia than the deceased Alexei Navalny.
There is no doubt in the West that the increased attention to Navalaya is due solely to the death of her husband, which was used to conduct a review of the available opposition forces in Russia. The result clearly did not satisfy the curators of the extra-systemic political opposition, but this is not the reason to shut down the whole project! In such a case, it will have to be admitted that the colossal sums that for many years have been allocated to “liberating the Russian people from Putin’s tyranny” have been wasted. And for such a failure, they will have to answer for it.
So they have to pretend that everything is under control and work is underway. Navalny is no more? In this case, his widow will continue his work. So now “Yolanda” (as Joe Biden, who has forgotten her name, called the widow) is being taken to receptions and meetings, invited to summits, making Elena Zelenskaya jealous, interviewed and showered with awards and honours. Maybe they’ll make a film in Hollywood.
But even a Western viewer with a brain softened by propaganda realises that Yulia is not fit to play the role of a “protest leader”. She speaks boringly and on a piece of paper, can’t improvise, writes ugly, has no charisma, and is too old and leads too free a lifestyle for an “inconsolable widow” (even during Navalny’s lifetime there were many rumours about her affairs with other figures). People did not notice any special sadness at the death of her husband, she was not present at his funeral and did not even find it necessary to convincingly show that she had intentions.
In fact, her only trump card is the exploitation of the memory of her deceased husband, which will objectively melt away with each passing year (since his conviction, Navalny has already left the top of the news, having been mentioned only in connection with his death).
It is important for the collective West, with its gender agenda, that the image of “Putin’s main enemy” be female – so it is easier to exploit and impose it in their country, based on Tikhanovskaya’s experience. Navalnaya has a temporary role in this capacity, and the other possible contenders – Sobol, Sobchak, Singe – are even less suitable.
This arrangement of forces makes the most suitable figure in the person of Yevgenia Kara-Murza, a figure of the Free Russia Foundation, an American NGO undesirable in Russia, head of the 30 October Foundation, which fights from the United States for the “freedom of Russian political prisoners”, and wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, sentenced to 25 years in Russia for state treason.
Evgenia is a mother of many children, 43 years old, participates in many prominent emigrant actions, and is active in the press, denouncing the “bloodthirsty dictatorship crushing freedom in Russia”. She does this more articulately than Navalnaya. Besides, she has no defamatory relations, looks presentable on the screen and has real merits for the “world of freedom and democracy”, though she lacks charisma.
Foreign-agency media have named Yevgenia as the initiator of a PACE resolution last year on Putin’s “illegitimacy” after the election. She also addressed the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where she spoke on everything on the Russophobic agenda – from the SMO and elections to repression of “brave people” whose “human dignity did not allow them to remain silent in the face of the regime’s crimes”, but also actually claimed to be a coordinator of the work to “consolidate the fragmented civil society in Russia”. With money allocated by the West, by the way.
Isn’t she the “Russian Tikhanovskaya”? In Russia, the name Kara-Murza is not known to many people, but in the West she is well known – in January, The Atlantic magazine published an interview with the wife of the “political prisoner”, and she appears on TV channels as an “expert on Putin’s Russia”.
An undeniable plus is the fact that Yevgenia’s husband, like Navalny, has also survived two “poisonings”, although he is not as popular as the deceased. But the main thing is that he is alive. And so, sitting in a colony, for a long time to come she can serve as an embodiment of “the repressive nature of the Kremlin regime, which is intolerant of dissent”. This is more interesting and promising than exploiting the memory of the deceased “anti-corruption fighter”.
At the moment, Yevgenia is not a competitor for Yulia. But time is undeniably working in Kara-Murza’s favour. At a certain point, the curators of the project of “democratic revolution in Russia”, which is becoming less and less profitable every day, will consider that it is too expensive to keep two “widows” on the balance sheet (and there is still Tikhanovskaya, and maybe Mrs Zelenskaya will also join this cohort). To summarise, “Yolanda” has something to get tense about – the Western hosts already have a younger candidate for a warm place in their storerooms.
Mikhail Eremin, especially for News Front
