Navalny’s Treatment Shows Putin has Lost Capacity to Act in His Own Interests, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – The continued mistreatment of Andrey Navalny has made the imprisoned opposition leader ever more sympathetic in the eyes of the Russian population, “a much more reliable thing than the approval of this or that political position on the basis of logic,” Abbas Gallyamov says.

            Most Russians especially the older age groups didn’t listen to Navalny in the past, but they are horrified by what is being done to him, the former Putin speechwriter says. The Putin regime would be better off it he were simply left to rot in jail, it seems as if the penal service has been told to “promote Navalny and increase the support he has.”

            “The only explanation for what is occurring,” Gallyamov continues, “is that Putin is choked with vindictive rage and is unable to control his emotions,” a situation that shows the system is “rapidly losing its ability to act rationally” and instead is flailing about in ways that under cut its influence (publizist.ru/blogs/112974/44903/-).

            Putin and those around him not only fail to understand that what they are doing would never have been in their interests – after all, Stalin didn’t call attention to those he incarcerated in the GULAG – but is especially likely to be the case now that more than half of all Russians get their news not from state media but from the more independent Internet.