A Populist Challenge to Putin

On Dec. 13, the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny became the first politician to announce his intention to challenge President Vladimir Putin in the 2018 election -- and he is trying to run as a more ardent nationalist than the unabashedly populist ruler.

Navalny has been a thorn in Putin's side since he started blogging about corruption in government procurement a decade ago, exposing the shady deals of the president's cronies. He labeled Putin's United Russia "the party of crooks and thieves," and it stuck. In 2011, when Putin's United Russia won a parliamentary majority in a rigged election, Navalny was the most forceful leader of the mass protests that erupted in Moscow. Although the protests fizzled and Putin won the 2013 election convincingly, Navalny remained popular among Moscow's middle class. Later that year, he ran for mayor of Moscow against Putin's appointee, Sergei Sobyanin.