Jailed Navalny embodies generation of rebellious Russians

If any single figure embodies the rebellious generation of young Russians who have taken to the streets to try to force out President Vladimir Putin, it is surely Alexei Navalny.
The 37-year-old anti-corruption campaigner, who received a five-year jail sentence for theft on Thursday, was one of the first protest leaders arrested when demonstrations against Putin took off in December 2011. After 15 days in jail for obstructing police at a Moscow rally, Navalny emerged a hero for the protesters, who chanted his name louder than any other at demonstrations and gave his booming, rabble-rousing speeches the biggest cheers. By the time the protests started to fade in the spring of 2012, Putin was back in the Kremlin as president while Navalny had established himself as the unofficial but largely undisputed leader of the opposition.
Tall, clean-cut, confident and articulate, Navalny has more potential than any other opposition leader to at least rattle, if not directly challenge, Putin.
Thursday’s verdict was seen by many as a sign that the president himself sees him as a threat, even though opinion polls suggest his appeal does not go far beyond the big cities. “Navalny’s sentence looks less like punishment than an attempt to isolate him from society and the electoral process,” declared former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, a longtime Putin ally respected by many Western economists and politicians. Navalny has not hidden his presidential ambitions and had been planning to run in September for mayor of Moscow, a potential stepping stone to bigger things, even though opinion polls suggested he had little chance of winning.
His five-year sentence – on charges he denied of stealing from a state timber firm in 2009 – scotches that plan anyway, as well as any ambition to run in the 2018 presidential poll.
CATCHING A MOOD: The son of an army officer, Navalny grew up mainly in Obninsk, about 100 km southwest of Moscow. He has a law degree and also studied securities and exchanges. Navalny represents a new, Internet-savvy generation and is seen as a potential threat to Putin even though the former KGB spy runs a tightly controlled political system that he has crafted in 14 years as prime minister or president. Navalny operates from a sparsely furnished office just off Moscow’s Garden Ring road, one of the capital’s main thoroughfares, with a small team assisting him in his campaigning against corruption, mostly centered around his blog.
Usually dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, or sometimes in an open shirt without a tie, he looks and sounds different from most Russian political figures – many of whom dress formally in suits and ties. “Navalny is the only possible leader I see,” a Moscow-based Western banker said of Navalny’s position in Russia’s fragmented opposition, which spent much of the time squabbling during the anti-Putin protests. “He has fire in those blue eyes of his.”