It doesn’t matter to Western policymakers that they discredited their prior denials of meddling in Russia’s affairs by feting her like they have since they’ve unofficially given up on trying to convince those at home and abroad who already believe that they’re guilty of this.
False claims of Russian meddling in the US’ 2016 elections caused the entire West to melt down in a paranoid frenzy that continues to this day, all while denying that they ever meddled in Russia’s affairs, yet their claims are now discredited like never before after Biden and Brussels’ embrace of Yulia Navalnaya. The first literally hugged her when she visited DC while the second earlier let her address the bloc’s Foreign Ministers, both of which came after she declared that she’ll continue her husband’s legacy.
Alexei recently passed away in an Arctic prison colony where he was serving a lengthy sentence for corruption-related crimes, but President Putin previously accused him of working for American intelligence. He fashioned himself the leader of the Russian opposition despite only representing its fringe non-systemic faction, though his vocal condemnation of the Kremlin earned him the praise of Western leaders and their media.
Yulia’s decision to follow in his footsteps already suggested that she’ll also collude with foreign intelligence agencies to meddle in her homeland’s affairs, but her embrace by the West leaves no doubt that this is indeed what they’ve been doing for decades already. It’s somewhat surprising that Biden and Brussels would host her like they did since this discredits their denials of doing exactly what they’ve alleged that Russia is guilty of, but on the other hand, it also makes sense if seen in a certain way.
The Western public, which is the target audience of those two’s embrace of her, has bifurcated into those who are skeptical of practically everything that their governments do and those who blindly support the same. The first already knew that the West is meddling in everyone else’s affairs while the second tacitly acknowledges this but believes that it’s in pursuit of the so-called “greater good” and is therefore acceptable.
Meddling in their minds only means that a supposedly non-democratic country is intervening in an allegedly democratic one’s affairs, but when the latter does the same to the former, then it’s regarded as “nobly spreading democracy”. It’s this category of Westerner that Biden and Brussels’ embrace of Yulia was aimed at, and these stunts were intended to boost their morale after it recently sank following the failure of Kiev’s summer counteroffensive.
These people think that International Relations is a Marvel movie replete with its own superheroes like Zelensky and Navalnya whose defeat they can’t accept. When confronted with “politically inconvenient” facts like the aforementioned counteroffensive’s failure or Alexei’s alleged ties with American intelligence, they simply ignore them and distract themselves with political fantasies. In Ukraine’s case, this is expelling Russia from its pre-2014 territory, while the second is seizing power in the Kremlin.
Neither will ever happen, but those among the Western public who still have false hopes about them after blindly supporting their governments’ respective goals need to be fed “hopium” from time to time in order for them to remain committed to these doomed causes, ergo turning Yulia into a celebrity. She’ll continue touring the West in self-imposed exile and profiting handsomely from it, both via public channels like predictably forthcoming book sales and clandestine ones like foreign intelligence payrolls.
It doesn’t matter to Western policymakers that they discredited their prior denials of meddling in Russia’s affairs by feting her like they have since they’ve unofficially given up on trying to convince those at home and abroad who already believe that they’re guilty of this. Instead, the focus is now on keeping their supporters fed with “hopium” in order for them not to become disillusioned to the point that they defect, thus explaining why they’re making such a spectacle of embracing Yulia.