President Biden faced his most significant early foreign policy challenge on Tuesday.
The challenge came via a Moscow judge’s sentencing of Alexei Navalny to more than two years in prison. The opposition journalist’s supposed crime is that he breached probation by receiving medical treatment after suffering an attempted assassination at the hands of Russia’s FSB domestic intelligence service. The U.S. intelligence community knows that the FSB was responsible for that August 2020 attack. The absurdity of Navalny’s sentence is defining in what it tells us about the nature of Vladimir Putin’s presidency and the endemic corruption at the heart of his regime.
However, Navalny’s plight isn’t just about Russia. By using the Novichok-class nerve agent against Navalny, Putin breached the Chemical Weapons Convention for the second time in nearly as many years. That undermining of a global, treaty-binding prohibition against the use of weapons of mass destruction also undermines American and international security. It demands an American response, just as this unjust persecution of a courageous man deserves our human rights attention.
Navalny knows he has been targeted for a simple reason: because he has the moral courage and intellectual tenacity to pursue Putin’s corruption. Breaking down the lie that Putin serves the Russian people, Navalny has documented the extraordinary degree to which Putin and his inner circle siphon off their nation’s wealth for their own benefit. Navalny’s present predicament has seen tens of thousands of Russians take to the streets to protest Putin’s excesses. The connection points between his reporting, the treatment he has suffered and suffers, and the reality of Russian politics are what so concerns Putin. It poses an unprecedented domestic challenge. While Putin remains popular, the Kremlin elite fear that Navalny represents a political juncture in the road against their interests.
So what should the Biden administration do?
Condemnatory words will be woefully insufficient alone and, frankly, worse than nothing at all. U.S. action must target those around Putin who enable him. One good option would be to impose sanctions on four key Putin enablers: Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov, Andrey Kostin, and Dmitry Patrushev. By targeting those oligarchs, the Biden administration would send a signal to Putin’s inner elite that their offshore wealth is no longer safe. It would also exert pressure on U.S. allies such as Britain, Cyprus, France, and Monaco, which facilitate these Russian investors. The primary benefit of this action would be to impose new costs on those who provide Putin with his wealth and political surety. Making them reassess their cost-benefit analysis of Putin’s regime is a good way to challenge the foundations of that regime.
Navalny understands that Putin’s public assurance of total authority is what so predisposes the Russian leader to despise him. Russian independent media outlet Meduza recorded Navalny’s explanation on Tuesday as to why Putin is so determined to silence him.
“The explanation is one man’s hatred and fear — one man hiding in a bunker. I mortally offended him by surviving [the chemical weapons attack]. I survived thanks to good people, thanks to pilots and doctors. And then I committed an even more serious offense: I didn’t run and hide. Then something truly terrifying happened: I participated in the investigation of my own poisoning, and we proved, in fact, that Putin, using [the FSB], was responsible for this attempted murder. And that’s driving this thieving little man in his bunker out of his mind. He’s simply going insane as a result.”
It’s time for Biden to act. Or for him to admit that all his get-tough-on-Putin rhetoric in 2020 was just for show.
