Russia Is in Agony, but Putin’s Dictatorship Is Going Down
Garry Kasparov on why this weekend’s protests may be the beginning of the end of autocracy in Russia.
Over the weekend, Russia erupted in some of the largest and most widespread protests in decades, after Alexey Navalny—the anti-corruption crusader-turned-opposition politician who was poisoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s agents last summer, and then spirited out of the country to recover in Germany—returned home for the first time and was immediately arrested. To get a sense of what the demonstrations mean, where they are headed, and whether this time will be different, Foreign Policy’s editor at large Jonathan Tepperman spoke to Garry Kasparov, the former Russian chess champion and democracy activist. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jonathan Tepperman is a former editor in chief of Foreign Policy and the author of The Fix: How Countries Use Crises to Solve the World’s Worst Problems. Twitter: @j_tepperman
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