The Kremlin’s criticism of Alexei Navalny is making him more popular

FIRST THEY ignored him. Then they smeared his underpants with Novichok, a nerve agent. When he survived that, they jailed him. And now they are trying to demonise him. After years of refusing to utter his name in public for fear of making him seem important, the Kremlin is levelling its most intense propaganda at Alexei Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader. He is the subject of every prime-time news programme and talk show—and they are not being polite.The scale and intensity of this propaganda assault are reminiscent of campaigns waged by Stalin’s henchmen in the 1930s against “enemies of the people” and, more recently, are comparable to the Kremlin’s information war against Ukraine in 2014. The narrative is tried and tested. As usual, it consists of two parts.