When Alexei Navalny sat down for his first campaign debate last month, he tried hard to appear presidential. His spiky cowlick fringe brushed flat and dressed in a dark suit and red tie instead of the trademark shirtsleeves, the opposition politician had come to woo people beyond the young Russians who have followed his call to protest and who have boosted his bid to challenge Vladimir Putin for the presidency.

 Yet Navalny’s choice of debating partners was jarring for many potential supporters: Igor Girkin, the fringe nationalist and former military officer notorious under his nom de guerre Strelkov, or “shooter”. Girkin has been accused of atrocities when he participated in stoking a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine and is suspected of involvement in the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger aircraft MH17.

 Less than two minutes into his first statement, Navalny told Girkin that if he became president after elections due next March, he would “allow everyone to run in elections, including you, including the nationalists”.

Navalny’s readiness to court the far right and even engage with a man some in the Russian opposition call a war criminal has started to raise questions about what the anti-corruption blogger actually stands for.

 “I support him as a demolisher of the Putin regime, of the current rule. But I can’t support him as a presidential candidate,” says Igor Yakovenko, a former sociologist, journalist and Duma deputy who worked with Navalny during mass protests against Putin in Moscow in 2011 and 2012.

 This is the enigma of Alexei Navalny. In the face of intense harassment, he has managed to build a surprisingly large popular movement focused on corruption in Putin’s Russia, including 130,000 dedicated campaign volunteers, tens of thousands of activists who showed up for protests twice in the past four months and more than 1.7 million subscribers to his online video channels.

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