Let’s talk about Alexey Navalny, the man Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t mention by name.
Depending on who you are in Russia, Navalny’s a brave anti-corruption campaigner standing up to Putin and his comrades.
Or he’s a Western stooge making trouble.
He’s been arrested, jailed, even poisoned — and now he’s back behind bars.
It’s why thousands of Russians have been protesting and getting arrested.
So who is Alexey Navalny? What’s his game plan? And should Putin be worried?
Russia is Putin’s world. And everyone’s just living in it. They kind of have to.
He controls basically everything: the state media, state-run companies, a powerful intelligence network and his critics say the justice system too.
Putin’s had his political challengers.
But no one’s really got the kind of attention that Alexey Navalny has.
Navalny started out writing political commentary online.
That’s why Putin’s people dismiss him as the blogger.
But this is what he’s known for.
They’re slick, investigative videos about corruption among Russia’s rich and powerful. They get millions of views.
What hasn’t stagnated is Navalny’s political ambition.
He’s organised protests, run for mayor of Moscow and even tried running for president.
But it’s been a tough fight.
Navalny and his supporters say he’s been held back at every turn.
Multiple arrests for protesting and two convictions for embezzlement and fraud.
Though Navalny says he’s innocent and the European Court of Human Rights had issues with the legal process.
One of those convictions even got him banned from running for president in 2017.
And then there were all the attacks. Antiseptic was thrown in his face. He says he was poisoned in jail.
And last year someone apparently tried to kill him again.
Navalny got really sick on a domestic flight, fell into a coma and had to be transferred to a hospital in Germany.
Investigators in Berlin said he’d been poisoned with a nerve agent belonging to the Novichok family.
It’s a Soviet-era chemical that Russian agents have been accused of using before on one of their former spies and his daughter in the UK.
Alexey Navalny blamed Putin and Russian intelligence. Putin just laughed it off.
So he's forced to go to Germany to get treatment.
But he’s still on probation for one of his convictions.
Then the Russian authorities turned around and said Navalny broke the rules by leaving the country, which means jail time.
But that didn’t stop Navalny from coming home.
So why did he return to Russia? Well Navalny says it was about sending a message, that he’s not afraid of Putin.
For his return to Mother Russia Navalny had something special in mind — another video, this time a straight shot at Putin.
It’s about a seaside palace that was supposedly built for Putin though a Russian billionaire who’s close to the president recently said it’s his.
That video and Navalny’s return kicked off some of the biggest protests Russia’s had in a long time.
They even spread to rural parts of Russia that haven’t really had big demonstrations against Putin.
Thousands of people have been arrested, Navalny’s wife, his brother and other opposition figures.
All of this matters because there are parliamentary elections coming up in September.
Some analysts talk about Russia’s political scene being roughly divided into thirds.
One-third of people who support Putin, a third who oppose him and another third who aren’t sure.
Putin’s supporters like the way things are.
They even voted for a constitutional change that lets Putin run for president two more times, meaning he could stay in power until 2036.
And many of them don’t like Navalny. They echo what the Kremlin and state media say that he basically works for the CIA.
There are other people who support Navalny or just want to vote for someone who isn’t allied with Putin.
But what about the millions of people in this section here.
Let’s be clear. Putin still has a lot of support.
But where Navalny has the edge is with young people who use social media. It’s a weapon he understands better than most.
And Navalny’s been campaigning to knock Putin’s base for a while.
His project called Smart Voting kind of worked.
United Russia lost its majority in three city councils.
So will Navalny’s game plan work? Well, usually you’d measure that at the ballot box.
But Russia doesn’t have the best record of free and fair elections, based on an OSCE report at least.
Navalny’s not trying to get rid of Putin overnight but he is forcing Putin’s hand.
Throwing Navalny in jail, arresting people, cracking down on dissent — it might just backfire.
There’s obviously a lot more to this story and stuff is happening in Russia all the time so check our website aljazeera.com where our colleagues have lots of analysis and all the updates.
I’ll see you next week.