Can Navalny the martyr weaken Putin?

Yesterday Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny achieved his martyrdom, with a panelled courtroom packed with journalists and Western diplomats standing in for Golgotha. A Moscow judge turned an outstanding two year, eight month suspended sentence for fraud into a prison term on the grounds that Navalny had missed probation hearings — dismissing as frivolous his excuse that he was lying in a Novichok-induced coma in a Berlin hospital bed at the time.

In one sense, Navalny has achieved what he set out to do. Two weeks of street protests in 85 cities across Russia followed his arrest after a voluntary return from his German convalescence — the most serious overt political challenge to Putin’s authority since his return to the presidency in 2012. It’s been nearly a decade since the beleaguered opposition were so galvanised, or their support so widespread. And thanks to the internet, Nalavny’s message has reached far more Russians than any Kremlin-controlled media could hope to do: his video detailing the ownership and interiors of Putin’s £1 billion private Black Sea palace has been viewed a staggering 100 million times.