Navalny, who has attracted a broad following across Russia by campaigning against corruption, was banned on the basis of trumped-up fraud charges that the European Court of Human Rights ruled invalid.
His real offenses were helping to lead opposition to Putin’s last reelection, in 2012; producing videos documenting Kremlin criminality, such as the more than $1 billion in property amassed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev; and bringing out tens of thousands of followers in cities across Russia this year to denounce the regime.
Navalny was credited with 27 percent of the vote when he ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013, and his presentation of his case against Medvedev had been viewed 25.7 million times on YouTube as of Tuesday. Still, the conventional political wisdom in Moscow holds that Putin could easily best Navalny in the presidential election, bolstering both his international and domestic credibility.