Navalny’s No1 Ally on the Occupied Territories, Belarus & the Nagorno-Karabagh Conflict

Interview

As the man himself recovers, the Kremlin tries desperately to absolve itself from any responsibility in the Navalny Poisoning. GISP spoke to Alexey Navalny's closest ally, Russian politician and former Russian Deputy Minister of Energy Vladimir Milov, on Navalny’s near death experience, and how it might shape his policies if "Navalny's Russia" ever comes to be.

How is Mr Navalny feeling now?

Much better; the recovery is pretty speedy. He’s regained his ability to talk and read, and he fully understands what's going on. But the poisoning was so complex and so severe, the doctors say there’ll be some lasting consequences for his health.

Your team, Mr Navalny, and most of the civilized world lay the blame for the poisoning at the Kremlin's door. How can it be proven?

We have absolute confidence the Russian authorities will try to cover this whole thing up. We’re pushing them through the courts to open an investigation; they refuse. Mr Navalny's lawyers submitted a request to the European Court of Human Rights to open an independent international investigation.

Proof will not be found without the cooperation of the Russian authorities. We’ll need the videos from the Omsk hotel security cameras, where Navalny stayed, we’ll need the hotel personnel to tell us who requested access to Navalny's room and how long it took, etc. If the questions remain unanswered it will be clear the Russian authorities are hiding something.

What reaction do you expect from the West?

We obviously see a strong ally in the democratic world, where law and order is the principle, where criminal actions by the authorities are unthinkable, and where acts of state-sponsored terrorism do not happen. We hope they will take action. Most important is that they stand firm to protect the people of the world, including Russians, from such brutal terrorist actions by dictatorships; that they do something about it.

What would “Navalny's Russia's” relationship with the West be were he to lead?

Navalny has always said we’ll have totally friendly and peaceful relations: all those elements of aggression and zero-sum games for zones of interest will become a thing of the past; that we will base our relations with the West on the international democratic world order, and we will not seek control or influence over any neighboring or other sovereign country, instead negotiating freedom of movement, open borders, freedom of capital flows, freedom of trade, and freedom of investment, particularly with Europe.

Would that impact the issues of Georgia, Crimea, Moldova, etc?

Navalny is a 100% firm supporter of the internationally recognized post-soviet borders; he has never called for a voluntary one-sided change of borders that were recognized after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The Crimea question first and foremost involves the Crimean people, and it is no secret that they have a strong historic negative sentiment towards Kiev and Ukraine; that’s the problem, and it is what Navalny has been saying: that the question of Crimea’s fate cannot be decided without asking the people of Crimea first.

Now on the Georgian territories. I was in Georgia before the war, and I met with Saakashvili, with Noghaideli, with Okruashvili and others, and there was a very strong sentiment on the Georgian side that we might retake these occupied territories militarily. That was never supported by Navalny nor by myself; we support Georgia's internationally recognized borders, but we do not support military takeovers; so when you try to look for some discrepancies in Navalny’s comments, you might take this as one but it is not: we completely recognize Georgia's international borders but we believe that the process of reunification should be peaceful. Like we're observing in the Western Balkans right now, with Europeans and Americans trying to bring them together, to pull them into negotiations, to actually reach some sort of agreement on the complicated issue.

Would that mean we’d see Russia turning from a manipulative mediator to a benevolent one?

How did these conflicts emerge? The Russian elite was extremely offended by the fact that some of the former soviet republics actually led this breakaway movement to become independent from our zone of influence; this is why they decided to create trouble there. Now we don't possess such logic: we want to treat our neighbors as fully sovereign countries, we want to build good and peaceful relations with them. Meddling in your neighbor's affairs makes you weaker, creates a lot of headaches: that is that is our vision. We don't want any more zero-sum games or zones of influence.

As happy as the West would be to hear that, what would be the reaction of the Russian population?

We’ve been talking a lot to a broad spectrum of Russian people in recent years, all with very different views. But there's one important point about Russian people: they’ve been deprived for a very long time of real information about what's going on in the rest of the world; they’ve been brainwashed by propaganda. We believe the Russian people are very receptive to serious talk, though; to discussions and arguments presented by strong political forces; we believe they can be educated. We can explain the complexity of international affairs to them and the great majority will be receptive to it. Yes, there’s an imperialist element which is pretty strong, but I'd say it's probably just 10-15% of the Russian population. The majority of Russians are against a costly foreign policy which involves resources being taken out of Russia and spent elsewhere to maintain geopolitical greatness. Putin's interventionist agenda generally has a very weak base of support in Russian society.

What are your and Mr Navalny's takes on the current Nagorno-Karabagh conflict?

I cannot speak for Alexey, because Russia is not directly involved, apart from the situation in Abkhazia, Ossetia and Ukraine; but my perspective is that we fully support internationally recognized borders. All countries recognize Nagorno-Karabagh as the territory of Azerbaijan; however, a military solution should be prohibited. In reality, and I have traveled to both Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent years, meeting a lot of Azerbaijani officials at international gatherings, what I was constantly displeased with is that Azerbaijan always suggested a military solution was on the table. We should try to follow the same relatively successful pattern as the EU pushes in the Western Balkans: open a perspective for European integration and through this bring them to the negotiation table.

If Navalny were to play any substantial role in Russian foreign policy, would the Belarussian union state agreement have any chance of materializing?

No, we do not believe in the union state with Belarus. We think it's an artificial construction that politicians are playing with. Lukashenko yields to Putin, and politicians use this as a tool to achieve their domestic and international policy goals. Nobody really ever wanted to create a solid union state; Russia merely wanted to swallow Belarus and make it an intermediary state. What we want, however, is very close integration, open borders, open markets; an open environment for investment and trade and flow of goods and services, etc. I think we share that with the Belarussian democratic forces. The union state is a phantom of the past, and we should simply abandon it.

Back to the poisoning. Is this issue big enough to galvanize Russian society into taking a more active stance against Putin?

Russia is a society with a lot of inertia: it takes many wake-up calls for us to move, largely because of our 100 years of totalitarian history. Society prefers to adapt until very last moment, and then “bang,” something explodes, and right now we're moving in this direction. Navalny's poisoning is a very important wake-up call for many people: since it happened we’ve had a major inflow of new supporters, and people who said before that they’d abstain are now joining us. But we’ll need more wake up calls. It will take some time and effort to move this big elephant 180 degrees, so don't expect anything to happen fast, but at least we're heading in the right direction.

By Vazha Tavberidze