By Rick Wilson
Vladimir Putin’s long hand of death reached out yesterday and struck down Alexi Navalny in a Siberian prison. The day before, Navalny seemed healthy during a video conference in his ongoing, manufactured legal torture. The Kremlin lie that Navalny “suddenly felt ill” is the usual sort of deception told by authoritarian regimes around the world.
They’re of the same family of risible excuses we’ve all heard before: “He had a heart attack.” “The helicopter crashed.” “He shot himself in the back of the head five times.” “He contracted a terrible flu…after being dosed with Novachuk.”
The only saving grace of this terrible moment for Russia and the world is its illumination of Putin’s character, exposing the monster MAGA worships from afar. Putin is the inheritor of the darkest strains of Russia’s ugliest instincts of corruption and the abuse of power.
We can’t undo the tragedy of Navalny’s death, but we can take from it lessons about who Putin is and the choices he presents for America and the world.
The question is more than “Will we allow this?” The question is “Will we become this?” The all-or-nothing, apocalyptic politics infecting the MAGA right is fertile soil for the evils of autocratic excess.
Donald Trump, who just gave Putin a permission slip to attack or invade any NATO nation he dislikes, will do his best to restrain himself for all of 30 seconds but in the dark recesses of his febrile brain, he’s smiling and dreaming of having the same power. If you think I’m exaggerating, elect him in November and watch what happens next.
His enablers in Congress, from Speaker Mike Johnson on down must own their pro-Putin stalling on fighting Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. His fanboys in the Senate, like Comrades Vance, Paul, Tuberville, Johnson, and Hawley will view the murder as a mere speed-bump in their tween-girl crush on the dictator.
The right-wing media apparatus will do what they always do in this fallen era and inscribe in the minds of their readers and viewers a catalog of lies about Navalny. The one man who stood politically against Putin will be falsely painted as a globalist, a criminal, a pedophile, a Nazi, a terrorist, and a monster who deserved what he got by the time they’re done.
Their obsession with Putin — “Putin can’t lose!” “He’s at the top of his game!” — is profoundly perverse and a growing feature of the American political landscape. For them, Putin’s murder of Navalny is another data point in their mosaic of adoration for a monster.
This moment is also a challenge for the Biden Administration to strike at the heart of the cancer that is Putin.
It’s about more than just aid to Ukraine — if this doesn’t change the chemistry on that, I don’t know what will — but about a more significant question of power in the world. The autocratic dream is to get away with murder and have the world look away, but murder is always where autocracies go in their happiest dreams; first bespoke — political rivals — then entire rival factions, then scaling to the industrial level.
There is no downside for the Administration to lead an international coalition to break Russia’s economic back immediately. We still have cards in the deck to play on this front, and it’s obvious the punishment to date hasn’t imparted any lessons. Cut them off from the global financial and telecommunications system.
Make his allies suffer. Deport every Russian visa overstay and anchor girlfriend in the Miami Mistress Industrial Complex. Seize his oligarchs and allies' properties, jets, yachts, and assets. Cash them out and give the money to Ukraine. PNG every Russian diplomat outside of Washington, D.C.
What’s Russia going to do? Ally with Iran and China? Invade its neighbors? Launch daily missile attacks on civilians? Send its intelligence agents to murder regime opponents with nerve agents? Brutally repress domestic dissent?
Putin did this in part because he believes Donald Trump’s re-election is going to save him, deliver Ukraine into his hands, and reshape the world into a place where the autocratic grotesque replaces representative democracy. Putin’s Fifth Column in America will do everything they can to help him achieve that vision.
As with every dictator throughout time, there are martyrs to freedom and liberty. Navalny became the face and voice of a movement in opposition to Putin’s autocracy and corruption. He faced a deeply evil man and knew the moment of his death was in Putin’s hands.
Today, that moment came.
