For all the media attention he receives as the crusader who would unmask the kleptocrat scoundrels of Russia, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny remains a sideshow of the country’s passage to a renewed Putin presidency. Yet he is also a wild card in its broader political life because of his ability to stir up large public rallies against the authorities.

The 41-year-old lawyer in recent years has emerged as a credible and (relatively) untainted figure of opposition, capable of bringing thousands of people onto the streets across the country. On June 12, 15,000 to 20,000 people came to Pushkin Square in Moscow to attend an unauthorised rally at his urging.

Last year, he unveiled a six-point manifesto focused on battling corruption, boosting wages and pensions, and reforming the police and judiciary. It also advocates for greater powers to be given to regional authorities across Russia, better ties with Europe, and an end to Russia’s visa-free regime with countries within Central Asia.

But still less than 2% of the population see Navalny as presidential material, according to polls, while Putin’s monolithic presence in the Kremlin endures with record levels of support (82% as of March, based on data from the independent Levada Center). Navalny is also technically banned from holding public office because off an embezzlement conviction his supporters say was designed to knock him out of the race.

More importantly, and in large measure due to his activism, sizeable protests are again a feature of the Russian landscape, in the provinces as well as Moscow and St Petersburg, creating a quandary for the Kremlin and government.

“The more harshly the authorities respond to them [the protests], the more seasoned their participants become: people are already getting used to being arrested, ignoring the mores and prohibitions that may have once stopped them,” writes Kommersant daily journalist Andrei Pertsev. “As the confrontation between Navalny and the authorities escalates, he builds a nucleus of seasoned supporters who make the protests more popular and more consistent. It is this nucleus that is helping people answer that nagging question: ‘Who, if not Putin?’”

Who indeed? With little experience of Russian politics, few take Navalny’s Kremlin aspirations seriously for now. In a poll of 1,600 people nationwide conducted in mid-April, Levada Center found that 48% would vote for Putin in a snap election, while Navalny garnered just 1% along with most other Russian political figures. Only ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov fared better, both with 3%. The greatest other threat to Putin’s re-election is rather public apathy or indecisiveness, with 42% saying they don’t know who to vote for, or whether they would vote at all.

Public ire at corruption in resource-rich Russia has ebbed and flowed in the quarter century since the Soviet collapse. Anger also at the hijacking of the electoral process boiled over in 2011 and continued into 2012 and 2013 after ballot stuffing handed control of the State Duma lower chamber of parliament to the Kremlin-loyal United Russia party.

But the idea that passions stemming from these and a raft of other  issues – poverty, low wages, road tolls, housing demolition, to name a few – can coalesce into a single credible challenge headed by Navalny or any other current opposition figure makes for better overseas newspaper copy than reality.

Some who have sought to unite the Russian opposition like ex-premier Mikhail Kasyanov have been neutralised, in his case through the release of stills from a sex tape in 2016. A year earlier former deputy prime minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near the Kremlin. Five Chechens, two with links to the security forces of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, were on June 29 found guilty of carrying out the assassination, but whoever ordered it was not found and is not expected to be.

Not all Putin-peachy

None of this means Putin will have an easy ride once reinstalled in the Kremlin as expected next March. Teenagers who have known no other president in their lives are increasingly joining the protests, bringing a fresh generation into the fray. And while economic growth has resumed after more than two years of recession, poverty too is rising. The number of people living below the poverty line in Russia rose to 23.4mn last year, up from 15.5mn in 2013, according to the World Bank. The bank also said 13.5% of Russians live on less than RUB10,000 (€148) per month, against an average wage of RUB39,000.

At the president’s June 14 stage-managed televised question and answer session, negative questions and comments that awkwardly appeared on the broadcast’s ticker tape remind that all is not Putin-peachy in Russia. “The whole country thinks you’ve sat too long on the throne,” wrote one citizen.

“The real challenge will be the mismatch between the expectations of the Russian people and the decisions that the regime will have to make after the election,” writes Alexey Makarkin, political analyst and first vice-president of Russia’s Center for Political Technologies. “The expectations are not unreasonably high: Russians do not envisage mountains of gold, but they do expect their material standing to at least not deteriorate, and ideally improve. The outlook for GDP growth (or, to be more precise, economic stagnation) and the fiscal situation, however, are such that anything other than deterioration appears unlikely.”

Another threat to the status quo of Putin’s Russia is the gradual demobilisation of the population since the peak of support for the leadership amid the standoff with the West over Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.

“As the demobilisation of society continues, this section of the population will begin to have doubts, as evidenced by the attitude toward [Dmitry] Medvedev,” adds Makarkin, referring to the prime minister’s waning popularity amid corruption allegations exposed by Navalny. “When the besieged fortress effect becomes minimal (which may be the case after 2018 if there are no extraordinary developments in the international arena), the commander [Putin] will no longer be off limits for criticism.”