this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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You’re loading in a lot of Kremlin-friendly conclusions that go well beyond the parts of the criticism that are actually fair.
Yes, some of the criticism is fair. Navalny did have a nasty nationalist/xenophobic streak, some of his older rhetoric was ugly, and his Crimea position deserved criticism. But that still does not make him “just a Western puppet,” and it does not change the basic fact that he was the most visible anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia. Not the only opposition, not universally loved, not some flawless democrat dropped from heaven. But anti-Putin in a real, consequential sense, and willing to pay for it with prison and ultimately his life.
You also seem to be slipping from “he had bad politics in important ways” into “therefore anything the Russian state said about him must be basically true.” That is where this starts reading less like principled criticism and more like reflexive pro-Russia filtering. The Kremlin spent years trying to turn every opponent into either a crook, a foreign puppet, or a fascist depending on what was most useful. Repeating that whole frame is not the same as being critical.
And no, I do not think Navalny was going to magically save Russia overnight. No one person was. But politics does not work like that anyway. Sometimes a deeply imperfect opposition figure is still a beginning, a breach in the wall, a stepping stone toward something better. In a system as closed and repressive as Putin’s, even that matters.
So yes: criticize his nationalism, criticize his rhetoric, criticize his blind spots on empire and Ukraine. All fair. But pretending he was just some irrelevant Moscow nobody inflated by the West is its own kind of mythmaking.
You're grossly minimizing his racist, fascist ultra-nationalist tendencies.
Just because the POS happened to be anti-Kremlin doesn't make him OK.
He was conspiring with MI6 on video, and he had another MI6 person with him on the plane to Germany.
There's plenty more showing he is in fact a western puppet.
He wouldn't be promoted and made a big deal here otherwise. Now that was myth making.
Also the reason why people, and you, wrongfully think he is "the most visible anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia".
I gave you facts about his insignificance in elections and the general view of the population on him.
I think you're doing a lot of projection here with your "reflexive pro-Russia filtering".
The western audience likes him because he is anti-Putin (like myself BTW) so he must be automatically good and the rest is simply Russian disinfo.
The facts are there that he was a racist extreme-right POS. To ignore that is called delusion in psychology.
In what way could this awful person be a stepping stone to something better?
But of course the west, being the fascist USSA and near fascist EU would never support a left-wing or truly democratic opposition would they?
They never have.
They have a documented history of supporting the most brutal fascists that overthrow the same left-wing or democratic countries and put in their puppets.
As we speak they are glazing the son of a torturing shah they put in place earlier in Iran or the headchopper Al Qaida terrorist who they put in a suit and changed his name.
Now he's a respectable puppet that gets welcomed with the red carpet treatment.
Machado, the extreme-right ghoul from Venezuela and Aung San Suu Kyi, another brural mass-murderer get the nobel prize from our 'rules based order' and free democratic west'.
Maybe you should see a pattern here and learn to see through the BS you're parroting.
Despite all the propaganda and censorship in the west shoved down my throat, I have learned, simply from facts, we're not the good guys.
You can call me pro-kremlin for that whatever you want, IDC.