Putin's opposition needs US protection to thrive online

On the eve of President Joe Biden's summit with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president once again reminded the world why most Western leaders don't trust a word he says. In an interview with NBC, Putin deployed his familiar arsenal of lies and counteraccusations. The attempted murder of opposition leader Alexei Navalny? Not me. Election meddling in 2016? Fake news. And so on.

Sadly, the world is stuck with Putin for now. There is a way, however, that Biden can leverage one of the United States' greatest assets — Silicon Valley — to help Putin's opposition.

In the last few months, Putin has been targeting the remnants of that opposition. After his agents failed to murder Navalny, they arrested him. Last week, a Moscow court effectively banned Navalny's political party and his anti-corruption foundation.

These are grim developments. At the same time, it's important to keep in mind the longer game with Russia. Eventually Putin will either die or be removed from office. When that moment comes, it's in America's and Russia's interest that there be a liberal domestic opposition that can compete for power.

That means protecting Navalny and his party on the web. This was one message that Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny's top deputies, carried to Washington this month in meetings with both the Biden administration and Congress before Wednesday's summit in Geneva.

"We have had to terminate our offline activities in the country" because it is too dangerous, said Volkov, who is now based in Vilnius. As a result, he said, "we've gone all virtual, which makes us of course dependent on platforms" such as YouTube and Facebook.

Putin and his cronies also understand this. This is why, Volkov said, the regime is pressuring big technology companies such as Google to remove content that Navalny's organization and party are posting online.

That information threatens Putin and the oligarchs that he controls. Last year, Navalny's anti-corruption foundation published a list of top oligarchs who have made their fortunes from corrupt bargains with the state. In January, the foundation sent a list of 35 oligarchs to top Biden officials, recommending they be sanctioned under U.S. anti-corruption laws.

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Biden has already warned Russia of the dire consequences if Navalny dies in custody. He should also make clear to Putin that he will personally ask U.S. tech firms to resist Russian efforts to ban the opposition from the Russian internet.

In some ways this is an old story. Since 2015, Google has been technically illegal in Russia, Volkov said, because of an internet data law passed that year. Yet Google is still available in Russia.

"Google violates more Russian laws than me," Volkov said. "Still the government does not do what it is required to do by its own laws. Instead every month they are trying to reach out to Google and say, ‘You guys are in violation of these laws, you must take down this illegitimate content of the opposition, otherwise we will really pull the trigger.'"

But the trigger is never pulled. Volkov explained that only 20% of Russia's 100 million internet users go online for politics and news. Banning popular U.S. search engines and platforms will create a new problem (80 million furious citizens) to solve a persistent one (an alternative to the Kremlin-controlled television stations). With this in mind, U.S. internet companies should call Russia's bluff.

It's fair to ask why the fate of a largely exiled political movement is any of America's business. The answer can be found in Putin's smug and defiant interview. Biden has held out the prospect of cooperating with Russia on issues such as climate change and Iranian nuclear proliferation, but it's foolish to assume that Putin has any interest in such cooperation.

It's also foolish to assume that Putin will stop trying to murder his political opponents abroad or trying to corrupt weak governments in Europe. So long as Putin is in charge, Russia will try to undermine the international order.

The best the U.S and its allies can do is to help keep the Russian opposition alive until Putin is no longer in power. Right now, that means helping U.S. internet companies resist Putin's efforts to exile his opposition from the web.

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Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was previously the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast. Lake also covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI, and was a contributing editor at the New Republic.