On state TV channels, the media outlets with the biggest audiences in Russia, there has been minimal coverage of Navalny’s death, and the first reports were largely slow to come and perfunctory.
On social media, however, it is quite a different picture. Posts on Navalny were among the most viewed, garnering hundreds of thousands - sometimes over a million - views, in hours.
And while Navalny’s team says it has not yet confirmed the news, many prominent figures sympathetic to his cause voiced incredulity and sadness.
“If this is true, then, regardless of the formal reason, Vladimir Putin personally bears responsibility for the premature death,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former Russian oligarch turned Putin critic, wrote on Telegram. Other opposition figures echoed those remarks.
There’s a good reason why support for Putin vs Navalny isn’t a rural vs urban thing but a getting news from TV vs the internet thing (contrary to most countries with freedom of the press).