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RUSSIA: Putin's Kremlin Painting Itself Into a Corner with Navalny Assassination Attempt; Russian Regime Risks Being Tainted as Either Culpable, or Incompetent At Maintaining Law and Order

(Steve Welsh - SCW Draft 9.17.20) The Kremlin appears to have "painted itself into a corner" regarding the assassination attempt on Russian anti-corruption watchdog and opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

The latest international furor, of course, is over the Russian regime's likely involvement.

Either way, the Kremlin, and the power apparatus of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, would make itself look weak.

If elements of the Russian government were involved, that would destroy any claim of legitimacy for a regime that already has reputedly distorted elections, distorted media, and engaged in other repression and efforts to constrain or suppress normal societal political activity.

Yet, beyond that, if elements of Russian government were involved, that would imply that someone felt the Kremlin was too weak to "hold its own" in a "fair fight" against a political rival.

Alternatively, it would imply that someone believed that the Kremlin "had something to hide" from open investigation by an investigative journalist, that the Putin regime could not defend its reputation as lawful against even a limited, private journalistic effort like Navalny's.

Perhaps most embarrassing, even if the Kremlin were not involved, would be the appearance of Putin's weakness in failing to maintain law and order or peaceful stability. If a high-profile public figure were attacked in broad daylight, that would imply that Russia's governing regime was weak, impotent and incompetent at maintaining law and order, and peaceful stability in society, even in a high-security environment like an airport, even, by admission, right in front of "the very noses" of elite Russian government security personnel already keeping Navalny under surveillance.

Even the latter point circles back to the legitimacy questions. The last refuge of an authoritarian regime is to claim that it, at least, provides social stability.

In Putin's case, that stability was supposed to be tied, also, to economic stability, which already had been eroded by economic decline and could be exacerbated further by even more sanctions, including if the assassination attempt is deemed a state-sponsored terrorist act.

Assassination Attemp and False Excuses

Whether expert analysis is to be believed, or the Kremlin is to believed, the Russian government either would be criminally culpable or weak and incompetent.

On the one hand, a murder attempt on a political rival or investigative danger would imply weakness and vulnerability, that a regime felt it was not strong enough to "hold its own" "in a fair fight," or that it would vulnerable in an honest appraisal by objective investigation.

On the one hand, if the Kremlin was, as it claims, innocent in the assassination attempt, it still would be implying that it impotent, weak and incompetent at maintaining law and order and the peaceful stability of Russian society.

Even before the miltary grade nerve agent used on Navalny was identified, elite German medical experts already had promptly judged Navalny to have been poisoned generically, refuting the Kremlin's official line.

That point also raised the prospect that the very Russian physicians who had saved Navalny, then detained him for a time, either were incompetent in their claims about other medical causes for Navalny's condition, or that they were were pressured by Russian government forces into publicly making statements contradicting their own professional expertise.

Military-Grade Chemical Weapon Likely Obtainable Only by the Russian Regime

It now emerges that German, Swedish and French experts have confirmed the involvement of military grade, chemical weapon nerve agent novichok. Apparently that chemical weapon pparently was almost certainly obtainable only by elements of the Russian government itself.

Kremlin Painting Itself Into Corner

Yet, even taking the Kremlin's official line in the light most favorable to the Kremlin, the star-crossed regime of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin appears to have "painted itself into a corner."

Needless to say, even if there had never any election fraud, other repression, or improper manipulation of media and public behavior, the Kremlin still would have abdicated any shred of governmental legitimacy had they attempted to assassinate a political opponent.

The same would be true if Navalny was not even a political opponent, yet merely a hybrid anti-corruption figure who was a combination of investigative reporter, attorney, activist and media communicator.

Yet what if the Kremlin, or more obscure elements of the sprawling Russian government, had nothing whatsoever to with the assassination attempt?

Kremlin Failing to Maintain Law and Order, Peaceful Stability

That would mean that the Russian government was impotent and incompetent at maintaining law and order and the peaceful stability of society.

For an authoritarian regime, one of the few excuses Putin might attempt to make for at least part of the population tolerating his presence would be if he, at least, maintained law and order against criminals, and maintained peaceful stability as a template for economic growth and peaceful daily life.

At An Airport, No Less

The Russian government not only failed to prevent a heinous crime against Navalny, a well-known figure. The heinous crime occurred in what is supposed to be one of the most security-conscious settings in society, namely an airport.

At the same time, while it was a big enough airport that security should have been sound, it was not big enough to have the excuse it being overwhelmed by busy activity. For the purpose of making excuses, it represented the worst possible combination for the Kremlin. It was an airport, and big enough that it should have had strong security. Yet it was quiet enough that it should have been easier to have strong security.

The Kremlin failed to maintain law and order even at an airport that should have demanded good security.

In Front of Security Forces

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the Russian government made the colossal blunder of admitting that they had been keeping Navalny under surveillance.

That did not simply add to the ambience of government repression and harassment of citizens devoted to helping improve the Russian nation.

It meant that a heinous crime occurred right in front of the very noses of what are supposed to be elite Russian security services.

So a regime that tries to suggest that it maintains peaceful stability, and, indeed, suppresses an active citizenry in the name of stability, essentially attempted to make the admission that it was so incompetent at maintaining law and order that a heinous crime occurred at an airport, which is supposed to be a high-security setting, in the very presence of Russian government security forces.

Of course, there also is the curious fact of photographic evidence of at least one individual being in moderate proximity to Navalny in the airport as Navalny had his tea, then turning up again at the hospital, with some commentators claiming that the individual, when at the hospital, was part of a group from the government making their wishes known to hospital personnel.

Failure to Stop a Terrorist Act Targeting a Major Russian Public Figure

Chemical weapons, such as the nerve agent used in the assassination attempt on Navalny, are a weapon of mass destruction. The use of a military grade weapon against a civilian public figure, or any civilian, adds to the terrorist nature of the attack.

The assassination attempt on Navalny involved the use of a military weapon, in a peaceful setting, against a civilian who also was high-profile, for calculated political or societal effect. Its impact also would have been foreseable to any rational person as inducing a state of terror in the populace for calculated effect.

Given the terrorist nature of the action, it will be interesting to discern the kinds of legal and international political concerns raised as a result.

In addition to the use of a chemical weapon in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the reality that the assassination attempt was a terrorist act, even if associated with an established government, could raise other concerns about treaties and other laws addressing terrorism and related legal frameworks that address terrorism.

Kremlin involvement would imply that Russia was a terrorist state and a state sponsor of terrorism.

That status could provide yet an additional basis to impose sanctions and other punitive measures.

There also could be the question of civil action against perpetrators, seeking money damages and the seizing of assets to satisfy legal judgments.

Amateur Hour for the Kremlin Spin Doctor Manipulators

The entire horrific debacle raises another very interesting set of questions.

In addition to the assassination attempt being a heinous crime, should the crime and its aftermath also be considered clumsy and amateurish?

For example, someone would have to possess limited imagination and limited savvy not to realize that the disclosure of the surveillance of Navalny would add to both suspicions of official involvement and, at the very least, make the Russian government look incompetent at its failure to stop a high-profile crime from occurring before the very noses of elite government agents.

To clumsy amateurs, emboldened by Putin's power, and used to Putin Spin distorting Russian media, perhaps they thought declaring Navalny to have been under contant surveilance would have helped prove that no poisoning occurred.

To everyone else, with more savvy and greater objectivity, who were not "living the Putin-haze propaganda," the constant surveillance would have made it seem more likely that the assassination attempt would have been, at a minimum, with Russian government complicity. Or, alternatively, someone with greater savvy would have realized that, at a minimum, for such a heinous crime, provably by scientific and medical inquiry, to have occurred under the watchful gaze of Kremlin operatives, would have made the Kremlin look like impotent fools unable to maintain law and order.

Either way, the scenario makes it look as if the Putin apparatus has been impregnated by "small-time" amaterurs.

Then there was the apparent lack of understanding of the nerve agent's ability to linger, or the sophistication of Western experts and methods of analysis.

Given that, for power, wealth and fame, all roads lead to Putin in today's Russian crony authoritarianism. Certainly that magnet might attract all varieties of personages. Unfortunately for Putin, ambition is not also wedded to ability.

Emboldened, and Made Sloppy, by Putin Power Grab?

Not long ago, Putin got even greedier than usual with his latest power grab, effectively setting himself up as president for life. He did so, even after cynically "stringing along" the Russian populace over the years with a facade of term limits.

Especially cynical was the effort to use a would-be "constitution" as window dressing for the power grab.

Even the referendum process was cynically cartoonish, something so embarassingly extreme that, had Hollywood or a novel featured such a ploy in a movie, they might have been accused of painting too unrealistic a caricature.

After finding ways to push, prod and pressure public participation in the referendum, participants were made to vote up or down on an entire, combined, multitude of questions, with the Putin-forever question nestled in. It was almost as if the only way voters could say no to "Putin forever" was to say they did not believe in God, for example.

One wonders if the Kremlin pondered whether to include a question about whether they liked their Mom.

Some observers wondered if, emboldened by the power grab, the Kremlin might become more aggressive and draconian.

Perhaps a more interesting question is whether, emboldened by getting away with the power grab, Putin apparatchik also are getting careless, sloppy and incompetent.

Personnel Issues?

Then there is the personnel question. Any regime or government can have all sorts of personages cycle through it, of varying degrees of competence or personal proclivities.

For example, Putin himself has encounted fiascoes like that of a defense minister, of limited professional background, obliviously showing up in his bathrobe to open his mistress's front door, i.e., from inside, early in the morning, only to have it turn out it was being raided by authorities purportedly conducting a corruption investigation on the mistress.

The most electorally successful U.S. Presidents of recent memory, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, both had scandals emerge later in their administrations, with their own teams turning out to be pockmarked by unusual characters.

Reagan had a wide array of advisors and cabinet officials of tremendous stature, only to end up having a parade of unusual circumstances emerge later. Yet, later, he also had a significant agency head suffering from a brain tumor at the same time Reagan's National Security Council was infiltrated by a figure who ended up confessing to being a felon, under immunity, on national television at a Congressional hearing. The confessed felon, who got acquitted on a legal technicality, did so in connection with selling arms to terrorist state Iran, to engage in the unauthorized raising of governmental funds, to then circumvent constraints on funneling aid to a non-state military entity.

Aside from any issues or criticisms Putin, himself, might deserve to have raised, if he simply has lingered on as long as he has, just how diverse a cast of characters will have worked their way through his regime, perhaps with their ambitions fueled by the fact that the Putin apparatus is the main source of power and money in Russia today.

And how might some of that cast of characters react to the emboldened of the latest shameless Putin Power Grab?

Who Would Take the Blame; Does Putin Have A Tojo?

Multiple commentators, including the author of this piece, already have long wondered if Putin ever might be compared with the King Henry who was associated with the assassination of Thomas a'Becket.

The ultimate question, however, might not be whether such imaginings might give Putin an "out" as a graceful way to avoid being directly implicated in any murderous scandal.

A bigger question might be, does Putin have a Tojo.

Already, questions were raised in connection with high-profile Russian assassinations about the accuracy of investigations and convictions that followed.

Yet, if, hypothetically, Putin ever were involved with something of provable culpability, the question becomes, are there persons willing to be "the fall guy" specifically for Putin.

The judgment of history seems to be that Emperor Hirohito might have been more intimately involved with the aggression of Imperial Japan than his later legal status recognized, that Hirohito could have been convicted of war crimes.

If memory serves, and it probably does, there was a somewhat obscure documentary that explored the notion that Military Governor Gen. Douglas MacArthur felt that the emperor was necessary as a focus of national unity for the successful postwar transition of Japan into a different kind of society. The same documentary claimed that MacArthur personally asked a leading figure, one of the war criminals, are you willing to die for your emperoro? The gist of the question seemed to be whether, by dying through adjudication as a war criminal, that figure, criminally culpable as he already was, was willing to be cooperative, in order to help spare Hirohito the same fate.

Just how loyal are Putin's people, if Putin ever hypothetically found himself facing a serious prosecution?

The Rest of the Aftermath

Perhaps it bears noting that for Richard Nixon, one of the most politically successful world leaders of the modern era, who won every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia in 1972, his forced departure, as a practical matter, came in large part from the aftermath of the Watergate break-in.

It was Nixon's reaction and the unfolding aftermath that, very much, helped to pave the way from the former Leader of the Free World, perhaps the most powerful man on earth, being forced out.

How will the Kremlin handle the unfolding international investigation and domestic reaction to the assassination attempt on Navalny.

Keywords: Russia, Putin, Navalny, Assassinations, Chemical Weapons, Terrorism, Russian Politics, Russian Nonprofits, Russian Journalists, Russian Assassinations, Russian Jourrnalist Murders