Alexei Navalny’s sweet online revenge on Vladimir Putin

MOSCOW — Just after Alexei Navalny woke up from the coma he’d been in since being poisoned with a deadly nerve agent, one of his closest aides suggested that the time had come to target Vladimir Putin.

“It was the first work-related conversation we had,” Maria Pevchikh told POLITICO from an undisclosed location outside of Russia. “The second he learned it was Putin who was behind [the attack], it was like: We’re doing this.”

Pevchikh, who runs Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation’s (FBK) investigative unit, was with him when he was flown to Berlin in late August. German doctors would later say the opposition politician had been poisoned with Novichok.

“We were 100 percent sure Putin was behind it, who else has access to a military-grade nerve agent?” said Pevchikh.

A joint investigation with reporters from Bellingcat detailing the alleged involvement of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the murder attempt dispelled any remaining doubts they had.

For months, she said, Navalny juggled physiotherapy and sleuthing while Pevchikh and her colleague Georgy Alburov worked behind closed doors for 18 hours a day with no days off, she said.

Fast forward several months to January 17, when Navalny flew home. 

Shortly after landing he was detained at passport control and taken to a police station. The next morning, a makeshift court ordered him jailed for 30 days for violating parole ahead of a hearing that could see him locked up for years on embezzlement charges that his supporters and the European Court of Human Rights have described as unfair. 

Less than 24 hours after the court ruling, Pevchikh posted a video on YouTube called “Putin’s palace. History of world’s largest bribe.”

On Thursday, the video reached 100 million views. 

For Navalny, the two-hour film, masterminded from his bed in an intensive care unit in a German hospital, is one of a dwindling number of ways to fight back against the Russian leader. 

The video zeroes in on a lavish estate on the Black Sea. It claims the “new Versailles,” some 39 times the size of Monaco, is being financed by Putin’s cronies.

Reports of an extravagant palace close to the southern Russian town of Gelendzhik go back at least a decade and over the years journalists have sporadically sought to dig deeper — at their own peril. On every occasion, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied any link between the president and the estate. 

But never before had the Gelendzhik palace been covered in such meticulous — and juicy — detail.

As well as exposing a complex financing scheme involving Russian state companies, the video said the area around the palace was marked as a no-fly zone, access from the coast was restricted, and the estate placed under the control of the Federal Protective Service (FSO), the security agency tasked with the president’s safety. 

То Navalny’s team, it was more evidence that the palace’s real owner is the Russian president. 

Aiming at the top

For a decade, the investigative branch of Navalny’s FBK has provided the opposition leader with the ammunition he needed to take on Russia’s rich and powerful.

The team’s investigations have targeted wealthy businessmen and politicians, including an exposé on Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2017, which triggered a series of anti-corruption protests.

But it took the poisoning to shift the focus onto Putin himself, even though Pevchikh says the team had received a trickle of information about the palace for years, much of it from disgruntled staff involved in a massive refurbishment project because of a supposed mold problem. 

For years, however, the leaks languished in FBK members’ inboxes waiting for the right moment.

“We were lazy. The way Putin’s corruption scheme is set up is incredibly boring. The paperwork is awful; one firm replaces another firm, whose ownership switches hands from one offshore to another and so on. It wasn’t a fun story to investigate,” Pevchikh said.

It wasn’t all dull paperwork, however. Alburov — who was not available for comment because he was serving a 10-day jail sentence for a post on social media calling on Russians to protest Navalny’s arrest —  recently recounted to Russian journalist Michael Naki how he traveled to Russia’s Black Sea coast to get closer to the estate.

To deflect any unwanted attention from the security services, Alburov bought a fake train ticket, and then switched from a train to a getaway car in the middle of the night, leaving his phone with a companion who traveled on to the resort city of Sochi, in case the phone was being monitored. 

Together with one of FBK’s lawyers, he then sailed out to sea in a rubber boat from where they released a drone. The result was a detailed birds-eye-view of the estate, which appears to include an underground ice-hockey rink and an 80-meter bridge to a “teahouse.”

But the real golden ticket was a detailed floor plan of the estate that they were sent anonymously in the summer, not long before Navalny’s poisoning. “We couldn’t believe our luck. Initially, we thought someone was trolling us,” Pevchikh said.

The plans were incredibly detailed, including information on specific items of furniture that the team cross-checked with leaked photos of the palace to verify the plans. 

They then made a 3D, interactive version of the palace’s interior in mind-boggling detail, including a casino (which are banned in Russia) and a hookah bar with a stage for pole dancing. 

Within a day the video outperformed the team’s Medvedev video (which got 41 million views over three years) and rose to the top of Russia’s YouTube viewing rankings. According to YouTube statistics cited by BBC Russia, the video has had 32.6 million unique views, 62 percent of which can be attributed to Russian IP addresses.

Statisticians who have analyzed Navalny’s video suggest Russians have been watching it en masse during their lunch breaks. 

In a country where the Kremlin relies on most people getting their information from state television, the film presents a serious challenge to the authorities’ information monopoly. 

“The video outscores all of Russia’s propaganda outlets. By now, Navalny’s message has reached about 55 percent of the adult Russian population,” Vasily Gatov, an expert in Russian media, told POLITICO. 

The video likely helped fuel anger ahead of a nationwide protest last Saturday that saw tens of thousands take to the streets in more than 120 cities across Russia. Some protesters carried toilet brushes, in a nod to a scene in the video in which Navalny claims palace staff recently placed an order for a toilet brush worth €700.

“Putin is on a binge, his toilet brush is more expensive than my mother’s yearly benefits payment,” 21-year-old Maria Yermosh told POLITICO at last weekend’s Moscow protest. “It’s disgusting.”

It is not just Putin’s alleged wealth that has touched a raw nerve in a country where 2020 saw a record drop in Russians’ real incomes. 

The video starts in Dresden, where Putin once served as a KGB agent, and recounts his rise to power and wealth through alleged shady dealings in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. 

“We wanted to show that he was an average person, very mediocre. It was a sequence of very mundane events that led to this. Things could have been very different,” said Pevchikh. “We also wanted to show that this extreme thirst for money and wealth has always been there. The second he got his hands on a tiny amount of power, he started to steal.” 

That message appears to have hit home with some Russians, with songs and memes ridiculing the president’s ostentatious taste. 

“Many have been upset by this pointless opulence. The video presents a certain image of the people who rule us, who went from rags to riches,” Lev Gudkov, head of the independent Levada Center polling firm, told the Meduza outlet.

With the video dominating the national conversation, the Kremlin has launched a counter-offensive to reclaim the narrative.

In an unusual personal reaction this week, Putin called the video “boring,” while at the same time denying any ties to the estate. 

The FSB admitted the existence of a no-fly zone in the area but attributed it to “increased NATO activity.” The FSO, meanwhile, simply denied there were any restrictions on the site. State television channel Rossia-1 on Friday aired a segment about a shabby-looking building still under construction, calling it an “unfinished hotel.” Meanwhile, the real owner has yet to be named. 

After a court on Thursday rejected an appeal to have Navalny released from jail, his associates once again called on Russians to take to the streets on Sunday.

“The street now has the final word,” Navalny’s ally Leonid Volkov, who himself is facing criminal charges, said on Twitter. “There’s simply no other option left.”

Recent events suggest, however, the authorities are opting for a crackdown rather than dialogue.  

Gatov, the media expert, doesn’t discount that, considering the YouTube video’s astronomic success, the online sphere could be next. 

“The state has many censorship tools, and it could resort to them if it senses a real threat. So far it hasn’t censored platforms such as YouTube, TikTok or Twitter, which Navalny relies on to convey his message. But as tension grows, I wouldn’t exclude such action, with an unpredictable outcome,” he said. 

Navalny’s investigations team, however, has vowed to continue its work, calling the palace video the beginning of a series of exposés on the president. 

“You could call it revenge. But real revenge should take place in a courtroom. Since that option is not available, we’re fighting this battle with the weapon that we’ve mastered: flying drones, telling stories and digging up details,” said Pevchikh.

“There will be many, many, many more stories to come.”