#Putin Accuses West of Using #Navalny to 'Contain' #Russia
VVP: "Our opponents or our potential opponents... have always relied on — and used — ambitious, power-hungry people"
A short thread on this particularly uncoded attack 1/ https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/02/14/putin-accuses-west-of-using-navalny-to-contain-russia-a72930

Of course, this is rhetoric used to try and delegitimise Navalny, along with the 'OMG he's slandering a Great Patriotic War veteran' case. Some are parroting it just because it's the party line, but I fear Putin may actually have been convinced of it by the more paranoid hawks 2/

This likely also explains the poisoning, a definite shift in practice towards him, as an 'enemy' because seen instead as a 'traitor' - a far worse thing, as I discuss here 3/ https://www.intellinews.com/stolypin-whatever-is-happening-to-putin-191838/

Furthermore, this belief about the West trying to marginalise and contain Russia is a very long-standing and serious concern of Putin's. The more he internalises pro-Navalny protest = Western subversion, the nastier things get. Is this a point of no return, though? 4/

I think (hope?) not necessarily. The perverse upside is that Putin has been much more protean of late, more likely to be convinced by whoever speaks last or speaks best. There is still an internal debate in the Kremlin, couched these days in the language of security 5/

We tend to assume it's always the Patrushevs and similar hawks, but more pragmatic figures even within siloviki, and 'politicals' also know how to mobilise that language effectively. This is not (yet) a done deal. But... 6/

The longer debate lasts, the more damage done to Russian politics + the harder to get out of the paranoid mode. If this still lasts to Duma elex, will prob mean seriously obvious abuses, inc purging of 'systemic opposition,' + then we will be in v dangerous new territory. 7/end