Russia's best known anti-corruption blogger, Alexey Navalny, shocked [1] [ru] many of his supporters when he attended a banquet at the Kremlin yesterday, March 18, 2013. The event was held by Aeroflot, Russia's semi-private national airline, where Navalny currently serves on the board of directors (though his tenure there ends this summer and will not [2] [ru] be renewed). In perhaps the most emotional RuNet reaction, journalist Oleg Kashin, one of Navalny's most vocal cheerleaders, tweeted [3] [ru] that going to the banquet sealed the blogger's “political suicide”:
Для политика, который 5 декабря 2011 был бесспорным лидером для всех, кто пришел на Чистые пруды, этот банкет – самоубийство, конечно.
For the politician who on December 5, 2011, was for everyone the undisputed leader [of the protest movement], who came to [the first winter protest] at Chistye Prudy, this banquet is suicide, of course.
Navalny later responded [4] [ru], writing that Kashin's tweets were “stupid” and ignored [5] [ru] the fact that Kashin himself attended [6] [ru] a concert at the Kremlin in 2010:
[…] Твиты твои глупые. Подыгрываешь мурзилкам всяким. Ты на концерт Стаса Михайлова в КРЕМЛЬ ходил. И чо?
[…] Your tweets are stupid. You play right into the hands of all the stooges. You went to THE KREMLIN for Stas Mikhailov's concert. So what?