"Putin Killed Navalny — Understanding the Nature of Evil is Not Enough: Everyone Who Is On The Side of Good Needs to Take Action"
Heidi Siegmund Cuda interviews Dmitrii Kovegin, who volunteered for two of Alexei Navalny's political campaigns and asks where the Putin resistance goes from here.
‘He didn’t want to leave Russians alone with Putin.’—Dmitrii Kovegin on why Navalny returned to Russia
“My message for the situation when I’m killed is very simple: don’t give up.”—Alexei Navalny
On days like Friday 16 February, I do not know how to do anything else other than to work. I allowed myself to sit in my grief for a few hours — knowing that Alexei Navalny would die when he returned to Russia did does not make the news any easier.
The ‘official’ report from the Russian Federal Prison Service said Navalny lost consciousness while taking a walk. He was serving a 19-year sentence on faked up charges of extremism, and had been recently moved to a penal colony to be closer to brutal weather conditions.
He was 47, and to those who ask me why the opposition leader and anti-corruption activist would return to Russia when he could have stayed in the West after being poisoned, I say, because that is what a courageous man does.
I knew when I posted this image two years ago that they were killing him. His courage was a threat to Putin’s control. That he was beautiful and flawed, admired globally for his bravery, likely made Putin sick with envy, like the queen in Snow White — whose jealousy and rage made her ugly and vengeful.
As Anne Applebaum wrote in the Atlantic that Friday, “Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country.”
I have asked my friend Dmitrii Kovegin, who worked on two of Navalny’s political campaigns to share his thoughts with us. And here are his responses to my questions.
HSC: You knew him and volunteered with his campaigns. Can you tell us about that?
Dmitrii Kovegin: I became familiar with Navalny’s anti-corruption investigations in 2009. All the years after, I watched after his political activities. I worked as a volunteer on two of his election campaigns: Moscow’s Mayor Election in 2013 and during his Presidential rally in 2017 in Orenburg.
Navalny definitely was a great guy.
Sorry, but I don’t want to say about him in a past time. Navalny was one who broke the TV narrative about him. The ladies over 55 easily fall in love in him from first sight, if he will be shown realistically on National TV. Navalny is a tall guy. He smiles a lot, and he likes to create a bond with others. He is a huge ambassador of Global Democracy. He supported Juan Guaido, and Belarus protests. Navalny tried to bring the standards, traditions, and practices of democratic elections to Russia. It means, he visited Russian cities and met voters during the rally. He started his Presidential campaign more than 1 year before Election Day. It’s an American standard, but it does not exist in Russian political tradition.
Usually, candidates open their campaigns three months prior to elections. The candidate promotions are limited to road billboards, TV commercials, TV debates, and rare candidates’ offices, 10-15 in major cities for collection of signatures-petitions. Russia has more than 80 regions. Navalny planned to visit almost all of them with local voters’ rallies. Alexei Navalny was open to hear the voter’s ideas and criticism.
I liked him so much. Navalny always understands the danger of Putin’s power for Russia and democracy.
HSC: What impact did he have on the Russian people?
DK: From 1999, with the help of propaganda, in general, Russian society chose for itself to be apolitical. Partly because it was in a condition of sleep and startle.
Navalny pulled the active office white-collar class out of a state of learned helplessness. Before him there are no successful grassroot-campaigns and mass-civil activism movements in Russia. Alexei Navalny was successful with promotion of his gold standard moral principles and will be remembered by Russians mostly because he constantly told everyone: ‘I’m not afraid, and you shouldn’t be.’
He was a courageous one.
Navalny motivated the generation of Y (millennials) to wake up from the lethargic dreams into political actions, and during the Presidential rally of 2017-18 he attracted many people from Z-generation (first zoomers before 2003) to civil and political activism. Navalny showed to the rest, the passive part of Russian society, the hypocrisy and cruelty of KGB-minded Putin.
HSC: What impact did his work have on the Russian people?
DK: Alexei Navalny loved to remind others of the catchy phrase from the Soviet TV adaptation of Three Musketeers: ‘One for all, and all for one’. Exercising democracy: because of Navalny’s work, people wanted to start going to mass protest, as regularly as they are going to work. Through methodical and long-term partnership work with other oppositionists, Navalny’s team prepared an army of independent Election Observers.
Alexei showed that people can and want to unite, even in such a society with a high degree of distrust to each other. You should understand the settings that the whole system worked against Navalny, where FSS aka FSB always works to separate any unity/community/union.
HSC: If elections were free and fair in Russia, would he be President?
DK: For the moment of the Election in 2018, he definitely had strong chances to become a Russian President. His Presidential campaign had a huge influence on people, and it made an important impression in the minds of voters in all regions of Russia. Navalny was able to break through to voters despite his negative image from television. He was banned on TV and Russian TV reporters mentioned him only in a bad way. With social media, he won over the people despite the TV ban, because people started to recognize his name and were interested in his agenda on the streets.
Navalny at that moment had a strong economical program and pool of experienced experts and advisors. It was a contrast with the regular image on city streets, where there were almost no offices of real opposition parties across the country.
HSC: I believe Boris Nemtsov could have been President if he had not been assassinated. What do you think?
DK: Boris Nemtsov had a more bright personality on TV, and he was more famous for an older generation. He could have become a President in 2022.
But as for 2017, Navalny had his own party of supporters, volunteers, etc. Also, probably Boris Nemtsov didn’t want to run against Alexei because they were allies. Since 2011, Navalny was a moral leader of the Russian opposition. In my opinion, Boris Nemtsov studied how to be courageous from Alexei. Boris Nemtsov understood that he made a huge mistake and ruined his own party in 2000, when his party supported Putin in his first Presidential election.
Boris Nemtsov had a kind heart and we miss him a lot.
HSC: With Nemtsov’s protege Kara-Murza in prison, do you get the sense that the Russian opposition to Putin is now so weak it can’t be effective or do you think the death of Navalny will mobilize people?
DK: They have both, the death of Navalny and Kara-Murza being in prison, created a devastating effect on democracy supporters in Russia and outside of Russia. To my mind, Ukrainians are absolutely right when they criticize the Russian opposition ideas. Right now we don’t have leaders with us. We don’t have an expert community for discussing necessary reforms of the Future Russia. Russian oppositionists should be busy with projects. I see grass roots Russian opposition campaigns for supporting Ukraine. Also we need to discuss the ideas and shape of future reform of institutions, lustration, and many other things that have a practical and an urgent sense when the time will come for a future democratic Russia. We need the help of experts and historians in each field, we can’t just go to protest on the streets without solutions.
HSC: When I heard Tucker Carlson say all leaders kill people, it signaled to me that he was grooming his base not to feel anything when another murder occurred. How do you see that?
DK: Yes, you are right. Tucker uses a tactic of ‘bringing a different reality’. In general, Carlson works to export ‘The Culture of Violence’ to American society. He asks Americans to close their eyes to injustice. This is an extremely dangerous statement for the media personality who has a sufficient base of followers. It is dangerous for National Security because it changes moral values in society. You know much more than I do about fascism. But I was curious to know firsthand, and I spoke with an American with German ancestors. I know her as a person with good moral values and principles. She told me that she thought about it a lot, and her answer was: “The roots of fascism grew inside the lack of accountability of their own leaders from the raising of fascist ideology. German society closed its eyes on actions and words, if they were taken or said by ‘Germans Aryans’.”
HSC: Putin killed Navalny. There is no other way to look at it. Putin along with Russian intelligence kills anyone who opposes him and the regime and who is influential. Anna Politkovskaya, Nemtsov etc. I believe Navalny went back to Russia knowing he would be imprisoned and likely die because he was courageous and believed in his purpose. Why do you think it was so important to him to return?
DK: People will continue to ask this question. He answered many times that he didn’t want to leave Russians alone with Putin. Probably, it was a gesture of moral support for every one of his followers — “don’t give up”. After his comeback, he often liked to say “I don’t give up, and you shouldn’t”.
I can’t criticize him because at least my escape became possible after that. I’m grieving as many others, and I wish that he will be with us here.
HSC: What would you like people to know about him?
DK: Alexei Navalny was a good friend, he never scared competitors, and he liked to have strong good-faith politicians around him. He was the best one for different reasons and many qualities, one of the brightest. He liked debates so much, I hope that debating clubs across the globe will look on his person as an example of bright potential and will name themselves in his honor.
Back in the day, Navalny was an organizer of debates in Moscow. As I know, the debates were part of work for his team. Alexei was always eager to learn. The small cozy libraries in his name will honor his supporters. He was a hope for many people in Russia. He was very patient with good people, but he hated any dishonesty in words and actions without exception.
He was strong with values, and refused any future cooperation with two-faced persons. This is one of the reasons why Putin persecuted and finally killed him.
HSC: Do you wish to tell people about your own poisoning, and how sick Putin and Russian intelligence is — so sick that they have people poisoned?
DK: Yes, but I don’t know how to start. The Putin mindset is: ‘if it works, it should be used’. He doesn’t look at moral values. He looks only to someone who can stop him by action. This is the only way to prevent Putin; to be aggressive.
I was an activist on a Presidential campaign, but Putin was scared by the announced upcoming peaceful revolution that was appointed on 5 November 2017. I suppose his guys told him that Navalny’s election campaign was secretly connected with the civil protest movement of Vyacheslav Maltsev.
Police detained many activists of that organization, but also the Russian law-enforcement visited the most active members of the Navalny Presidential campaign. Putin wanted to prevent Navalny from making trips across Russia. Navalny was detained multiple times.
At the same time Putin sent a team of poisoners to travel with Navalny on his trips. The FSB practiced poisoning for a long time, but society didn’t pay a lot of attention to these cases. Small activists died inside the countryside of huge Russia. Who will look after them? My friends and I were poisoned at the end of November 2017. Scary part for me: my friends were not volunteers in the political campaign. Their political activity was to come to protests for defending democracy. That’s all, they were poisoned just because of me. You can read the testimony in my Twitter account because this is an interview about Navalny, and I can’t take your time.
Christo Grozev and Navalny’s investigation put a light on Putin’s criminal actions. Russians and the World are indebted to them for revealing scary important information.
HSC: Why do you think the world allows Putin to keep murdering his own citizens?
DK: The world is relaxed about Putin because it doesn’t understand the proximity of its own misfortune.
Moreover, the leader of the democratic world has greater responsibility than other country leaders. ‘But to everyone to whom much was given, much will be required from him...’ (The Bible verses).
Mitt Romney said in his biography excerpt in the Atlantic that democracy is unnatural for human nature. If he’s right, then all the more reason that we should put effort and encourage others to do the same for preserving and inspiring a global democratic world order, as well as preserving democracy at home.
HSC: If you could do anything today to make the world a better place, what would you do?
DK: I want politicians to keep their word. We need to decide who should teach people to watch over politicians’ accountability. I want people to exercise this type of behavior: demand not only from the opposite political party, but from your own, too. No one is above the Law. Restoring or establishing in developing countries an Institution of Reputation. Teach people how to help others, and I believe to better start from supporting your own people who defend democracy. Educate the voters so that they finally become educated and aware citizens. That will help future politicians to make right decisions.
Invest in developing small communities. Strengthen the journalists’ communities and provide a way for financial independence for independent journalists. We need new ideas and concepts when professionals think through cybersecurity comprehensively for the citizens. Inspect and improve them. For Russians, I wish that they have an open heart and desire to exercise democracy. I want that we will be able to see a peaceful prosperous democratic Ukraine free from Russian oppression.
Understanding the nature of evil is not enough: everyone who is on the side of good needs to take action.
In subsequent conversations with Dmitrii Kovegin, he emphasized again that “there is no leadership without moral leadership” and that Putin and those Americans promoting his propaganda “don’t just destroy countries, they destroy the idea of democracy”.
When I wrote a report on dissident power and beating back against bullies I wrote that the strongmen are trying to destroy our empathy.
By killing Navalny, I would like to think Putin has hastened his own demise.
Everyone on the side of good needs to take action.
At a security conference in Munich hours after his death, Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya said:
“If it’s true, I want Putin and his whole entourage, his friends and his government to know that they will be held responsible for everything they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband. And this day will come very soon.”
It simply cannot come soon enough.
