If you remember, some time ago there was a huge hype on the West about the Putins rival Alexey Navalny.

Shortly, Navalny plan was to defeat Putin by striking his wallets AKA "Russian" oligarchs assets on the West. Navalny collected a lot of proofs that nearly all "Russian" oligarchs assets on the West was bought using criminal money. As far as I understand, Navalny had some agreement with West, that he will collect proofs and West will arrest/confiscate "Russian" oligarchs property, weakening Putin and Co. and seeding unrest among Putins oligarchs against him. Navalny collected all necessary proofs (may be with some help of MI6/Bellingcat) risking with his life, and even was poisoned by FSB. West did nothing. Navalny even sacrificed himself, returned to Russia and obviously went to jail, may be in attempt to force West to fullfill its part of deal.

But West just betrayed Navalny and did absolutely nothing against "Russian" oligarchs.

Navalny, may be was the only possible way to displace Putin in Russia. Most people in Russia support the idea of oligarchs wealth confiscation/arrest a lot. Navalny dramatically lose that support by pushing coronahoax narrative even more than Russian Federation authorities, but still had chances to fuck the coronahoax narrative and gain popularity again. He already did things that was not welcomed by West, like openly talking about unprecedented censorship in Twitter after Trump ban.

However, West gifted all that powerful lever of arresting "Russian" oligarchs Western assets directly to the Putin. Now Russian propaganda sometime use that thing as "Putin do what Navalny promised to do, but completely failed. It was Putin, not Navalny, who stripped oligarchs from their western wealth stolen from Russians".

Navalny opposition does not exist now and there is zero chance for his supporters to gain any influence or support from people again. They had tens millions of supporters back then and now have only few thousands crying about Russian invasion and enormous amount of hidden COVID cases in Russia from abroad.

Just to clarify things about "Russian" oligarchs and their wealth and assets. Everything that bastards have, they literally stole from Russian people. In no way that bastards could be accounted as businessmans. Every single "Russian" oligarch is a thief and criminal, all their wealth and assets should be confiscated (regardless of officialy declared oligarch relative/friend as owner) and all of them should be in jail. This might be the only thing all Russians agree on, independent of their political views.

Rise of Putin's rating in Russia is fuelled mostly by that Western "sanctions" against most disgusting thieves like Abramovich, Usmanov, Potanin and others, not by that questionable war. Propaganda quickly repainted that as achievement of Putin. And it is even partially true - that bastards lost their ability to hide their stolen wealth on the West.

So, interesting question - why the West completely betrayed Navalny and why West gave the most powerful lever of influence over Russians it promised for Navalny directly to Putin? West simply allowed Putin to completely defeat most probable real opposition-to-be and then do for the Putin everything that they promised to do in support of that potential opposition? Was that just elites stupidity, or the intentional elites plan to provide maximum support for Putin in Russia? Or elites thought that Navalny, looking for population support could eventually become a threat for them, unlike Putin?