They are exclusively Mr. Navalny’s supporters. For the first time in his 17 years in power, Mr. Putin has one chief opponent — a dominant opposition leader who is, in fact, a lot like Mr. Putin. Even on simple questions — for example, the political status of the Crimean peninsula — Mr. Navalny tries to answer in broad terms. Mr. Putin and Mr. Navalny cannot do without each other, and their confrontation somehow is evolving into a state of codependency, whose obvious result is the duplication of the Putin leadership model in the anti-Putin opposition. Mr. Putin can be criticized for destroying democratic institutions in Russia, concentrating the whole government around himself and paralyzing civil society; by this logic, the alternative to Mr. Putin ought to be democracy.

Source: New York Times July 03, 2017 08:15 UTC