Vladimir Putin is still rattled by Alexei Navalny

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN has every reason to be angry. He has tried to poison Alexei Navalny, Russia’s opposition leader. He has locked him up in one of Russia’s harshest penal colonies. He has outlawed his anti-corruption foundation. He has chased his comrades out of the country and barred his allies from standing in elections. And yet, after all this, Mr Navalny and his movement are still featuring at the heart of the elections to Russia’s Duma (its parliament) on September 19th.

On the surface, the political field is entirely Mr Putin’s. The only parties allowed to run, including the Communists and Yabloko, an innocuous liberal outfit, have been sanitised by the Kremlin. With the media muzzled and repression and censorship the main tools of campaigning, the Kremlin-backed United Russia’s win is a given. Yet under the surface a drama is unfolding, as the Kremlin frantically fights Mr Navalny’s effort to awaken and co-ordinate voters

The Kremlin has been hoping that most Russians, assuming the election is a foregone conclusion, will take no interest in it. If they stay at home, United Russia should win hands down, since a solid bloc of state workers, pensioners and members of the armed forces will be cajoled into voting for it. If the turnout is low, the need for blatant rigging would be avoided, along with the risk of...