Putin has not deigned to recognize his fiercest political opponents, such as Navalny, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and chess celebrity Garry Kasparov. But he has taken oblique swipes at them. In a lengthy article he published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta and posted on his web site, the prime minister called mounting nationalism in Russia the chief danger to the state, and attributed it “directly to the break-up of the U.S.S.R. and, in essence, of the Greater Russia that had been formed all the way back in the 18th century.” The fall of the Soviet Union left Russia “on the brink of civil war, and in some well known regions” — Chechnya, for example — “beyond the brink,” in armed conflict. Given Russia’s multiethnic composition, Putin professed to be “deeply convinced that attempts to preach in favor of building a monoethnic Russian national state contradict our thousand-year history,” and would lead to “the destruction of the Russian people and Russian statehood.”

Putin’s target was most likely Navalny, who “coined the phrase “Stop feeding the Caucasus” and has joined in several prominent nationalist rallies,” the Moscow Times noted. Navalny has had little trouble rallying Russians behind the flag. After all, “43 percent of Russians support the notion of ‘Russia for Russians’ and . . . xenophobic sentiment is on the rise.”

With emotions running high, and without a dialogue between the government and its most determined opponents, the countdown to a possibly violent clash has begun.