Why Did It Take So Long for Vladimir Putin to Kill Alexei Navalny?

President Vladimir Putin couldn’t murder opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a bullet behind closed doors in the good-old Soviet way—at least not according to Russia’s current constitution. And that document has surprising importance to the country’s sham democracy and its leader.

It’s an interesting document, and it may have prolonged Navalny’s life, though for reasons that have little to do with the rule of law.

Only those guilty of one or more of five serious crimes officially can be executed, according to this piece of paper Putin has amended many times to give himself more power, or more time in power.

But he did bother to amend it.

Russia is a place where forms must be followed and “justice” offered with the state’s one hand, while summary judgment is dealt out with the other.

Navalny, an irritant for more than a decade, was never charged with the particularly grim forms of murder that would qualify for a death sentence. Nor was he accused of attempting to murder a judge, nor a police officer, nor a state official, nor genocide.

So how does the dictator of a shadow republic handle a man whose courage in word and action are nearly indistinguishable from suicidal intentions?

In Russia’s case, Navalny was treated with a two-prong approach.

First, he was allowed a measured amount of rope.

For the Kremlin, Navalny offered the opportunity to demonstrate its free-speech credentials to the gullible, both external and internal. Navalny was allowed to speak and to work, with obstacles strategically placed in his path. Navalny’s speech allowed others to feel that they had a voice.

It was Putin’s government bending, not breaking, when Navalny and his team were allowed to carry out corruption investigations of people in the tightest circles around Putin, and even Putin himself.

That’s not to say that anyone in the Kremlin liked it, but it was the cost of doing business in a republic of lies—emphasis on “republic.” They feared few consequences, unless there crimes were truly news to those above.

So, Putin allowed Navalny’s videos to be found not just on the Western web, but by Russians as well. No, Navalny didn’t have a TV channel, but he had channels to share his contempt for the regime. Even from prison, where Navalny spent years, he was able to call people out onto the streets to protest Putin’s eternal rule. He spoke to the world during court appearances. He spoke with allies and smuggled out messages, trying to keep the opposition alive as he froze above the arctic circle.

Of course, when Navalny pushed hard enough—or even a little too hard—the rope would become a rubber band and snap back. More allies beaten and jailed, more outlets of free expression curtailed, more time in horrific prisons for Navalny himself.

While Putin’s finger was firmly planted on the scales of justice, the forms held. There were judges, juries, lawyers, and a glass cage for the star attraction in the show trials, Navalny himself. It was déjà vu, Soviet style.

I say Navalny was allowed because Russia has a history of treating opponents otherwise. This is the nation of Vasily Blokhin, who killed tens of thousands by his own hand at the orders of Joseph Stalin, many of whom showed far less defiance than Navalny ever did.

But that brings us to the second prong of Putin’s approach to the problem of Navalny: violence unsanctioned by even the loosest interpretation of the law.

Yes, Moscow’s assassins don’t always get it right—especially not the first time—but escaping spies, death squads, goon squads, and the practitioners of polonium isn’t something you can do forever.

Navalny himself was poisoned with Novichok—a nerve agent that didn’t kill him—in August 2020. He fell into a coma and miraculously came back to life after months of recovery in Germany.

He went back to Russia immediately upon his recovery. The New York Times has an interesting look at what might have motivated him, but courage, stubbornness, and fear of irrelevancy are the highlights.

Navalny was immediately arrested, and the judicial farce began. Multiple trials and multiple sentences, his prisons getting farther and farther removed from the capital, the conditions more harsh.

What more could Vladimir Putin want?

For Alexei Navalny to shut up.

A few short weeks before the presidential election that will—short of an act of God—continue Putin’s unbeaten streak, a man who had seemed healthy the day before was announced dead in his prison north of the arctic circle.

What we are left with is unambiguous ambiguity, just as in the recent case of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the “chef” who marched his men on Moscow and had a peaceful meeting with Putin just a few days later.

Shortly after that meeting, Prigozhin lost his life in a “mysterious” plane crash caused by an explosion. Certainly, the bomb aboard was in no way planted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, late of the KGB, and more recently of war crimes in Ukraine, or his representatives.

Navalny was “legally” sentenced to prison. All the forms were filled out, the hearings heard, the briefs filed, and the motions made. If he just happened to die while he was there? Well, whose fault is that?

This is a lesson to the citizens of the United States and all other democracies. Adhering to the symbols—but not the substance—of good governance is no different than not having them at all.

The spirit of democracy matters far more than any words on a page.

Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.