Is the Greatest Threat to Putin Really Alexei Navalny?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On 12 June 2017 thousands of protesters took to the streets in over 160 towns and cities across Russia. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny called on people to march against corruption from Kaliningrad in the west to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the east, in bustling cities and significantly, in rural towns where support for President Putin is strong. This is unusual. Protests are usually restricted to the urban elites in Moscow. So who is Navalny and how has he managed to bring so many people out on the streets?
Our expert witnesses assess the strength of the opposition movement in Russia. They explain that the protests reveal a greater threat to Putin. The mobilisation of a young generation who do not believe what they see on state TV and are turning to opposition politics online instead.
Presenter: Ruth Alexander Producers: Phoebe Keane and Estelle Doyle
(Photo: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny speaks during a rally in Lyublino, a suburb of Moscow, 20 September 2015. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds An inflatable rubber duck bounces above the delighted crowd in St. Petersburg. |
| 0:44.7 | Moments later, it's on the ground, surrounded by police, deflated and detained. |
| 0:51.3 | Because this is not just a rubber duck, it's a sneering criticism of the Russian regime. |
| 0:58.0 | A symbol held aloft at dozens of protests that took place on June the 12th. of Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Russia, protesting against perceived corruption in government. |
| 1:18.0 | Hundreds were arrested, including the organizer Alexei Navalny. |
| 1:23.0 | I'm Ruth Alexander. |
| 1:28.0 | This is the inquiry on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:31.0 | We want to know, Alexei Novani the greatest threat to |
| 1:36.4 | President Putin? We're talking to four expert witnesses, none of whom is a supporter of the Kremlin. |
| 1:44.0 | Because we're not trying to assess whether the regime is good or bad. |
| 1:48.0 | Just how much trouble Alexei Navalny could cause it. Part 1, sneakers and rubber ducks. |
| 2:07.0 | The Vallney, I once sort of described as kind of a good looking in a homey sort of way. |
| 2:18.0 | Boy next door? |
| 2:19.0 | Yeah, very much boy nextcksdore. |
| 2:23.6 | Our first expert witness, Alec Loon, works for the Guardian newspaper in Moscow. |
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