No mention of Navalny
“Basically, it was just a festival of extravagant generosity,” wrote independent analyst Abbas Gallyamov.
But, he added, once the election is over, Russians await “unpopular measures: a new mobilization wave, the increase of fighting age and everything else they’ve thought of.”
In a first, Putin’s address was not just shown on state TV but also in cinemas and on billboards, which Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov explained was the natural result of viewers’ demand for “interesting” content.
Photos shared by independent media showed half-empty auditoriums throughout the country, with some media reporting Russian students had been pressured to watch the address.
Unsurprisingly, Putin made no mention of Alexei Navalny, his number one political foe, who died a sudden death in an Arctic penal colony earlier this month and whose funeral is set to take place Friday in Moscow. Navalny’s team has said they had experienced huge difficulties in finding a venue that would agree to host the funeral, after authorities previously refused to release the dissident leader’s body.
During the three years he was in prison, Navalny frequently sued the prison authorities for what he said were violations. In one such lawsuit, the opposition politician said in a humor-infused post on social media last July, he complained that prison officials had forced him to listen to Putin’s Federal Assembly speech from 2023 every evening for 100 days in a row.
“I told the political officer of my colony: ‘Are you guys nuts? Can’t you at least put on different speeches? Putin sure has made plenty of them.’”
Navalny said the prison officer answered: “Once Putin makes his next annual address, they’ll start playing it for us instead.”
