Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of Alexei Navalny, took the main stage of the Munich Security Conference this Friday, three hours after the Russian penal authorities reported her husband's death in prison. Dark suit, glassy eyes, but perfect in gesture and voice, she spoke for several minutes after receiving deep applause from the audience made up of political, military and diplomatic leaders. “I want Putin and his people to know that they will be punished for what they did to our country and to my family.” They will be brought to justice. That day will come soon,” he said.
Navalnaya spoke these words on the same stage where Vladimir Putin gave a brutal speech in 2007 that has gone down in history, in which he came to the West to say that he rejected the current world order, which he claimed to be de facto spheres of influence for a Russia that he had stabilized, in which he vented his displeasure and warned of what would gradually happen if the West did not give in. The West did not give in, it opened the NATO door to Ukraine and Georgia. Soon came the invasion of Georgia in 2008, then that of Ukraine in 2014, the operation in Syria in 2015 and the full-scale war against Kiev in 2022. All, hand in hand with an incessant spiral of internal repression Navalnaya's husband Alexei Navalni was one of the main subjects. The external and internal pillars of the reconstruction project of Russia as a great power based on the ruthless use of force.
Putin, at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007. Johannes Simon (Getty)
“I am sure that if Alexei were me, he would have decided to go to that stage at that moment. I don't know if we should believe the terrible news we only get from official media. For many years they lied constantly. But if it is true, I want Putin and his team to know that they will be punished for what they did to our country and my family. They will be brought to justice. That day will come soon. “I call on the entire international community to unite and fight this evil, this terrible regime,” said the opponent’s wife.
The list is long, from the journalist Anna Politkovskaya to the politician Boris Nemtsov. The oppression, the strangulation of the fragile democracy that tried to gain a foothold after the fall of the USSR is visible to everyone in brutal episodes. Western leaders expressed their rejection of the news. Shortly before Navalnaya, Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, spoke on the same stage and criticized Putin's brutality. Many others expressed similar sentiments.
Divided international community
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But the international community to which Navalnaya turned is divided. A large majority of countries condemned Ukraine's invasion at the United Nations, but only fifty have imposed sanctions on Putin's regime. It is a fragmented world in which the quality of democracy is being undermined, in which the attractiveness of this idea seems to be waning and in which poles are being formed that do not seem to be changed by the death of a heroic opponent.
Authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are moving closer together. The Westerners and the democracies in the Asia-Pacific region also interact with each other, but they fail to strengthen relations with the rest of the world. The countries of the Global South, a heterogeneous group that includes regimes of different types, fundamentally refuse to unite, take positions and focus on defending certain interests, such as obtaining fair compensation for environmental damage caused by others.
Not long after Putin's famous speech in 2008, the West suffered the terrible financial crisis, the consequences of which in the following years led to popular discontent, the emergence of populist proposals, dysfunction or complete paralysis of systems. Politicians, including the most representative of them, the United States. In this context, the major authoritarian regimes felt emboldened to act; others are more motivated to keep the same distance.
This is the audience to which Yulia Navalnaya was addressing, one in which the driving force of the idea of democracy is dwindling. Russia represents the most direct and brutal challenge to this idea. In the same scenario, Putin warned that he wanted to change the world order, and years later he would sign joint statements with Xi Jinping stating that democracy and human rights were relative concepts that could be expressed in different ways depending on history and culture . culture of every nation.
In 2024, will other countries join what Navalnaya's speech in Munich represents? Or with what Putin's speech in Munich 2007 represents? The answer will determine the fate of the 21st century.
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