Feb 16, 2024. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
Alexei
Navalny, the fiercest foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin who crusaded
against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests, died in
prison Friday, Russia’s prison agency said. He was 47.
Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia’s prison agency said. He was 47.
The
stunning news of Navalny’s death — less than a month before an election that
will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and
outrage directed at the Kremlin leader who has cracked down on all opposition
at home.
Navalny
felt unwell after a walk, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, and
lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived but paramedics failed to revive him.
The service said the cause of death was “being established.”
Navalny had
been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after
recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the
Kremlin. Since then, he received three prison sentences, all of which he
rejected as politically motivated.
Praise for
Navalny’s bravery poured in from Western leaders and others who have opposed
Putin’s rule. The opposition leader’s health has deteriorated recently and the
cause of death remains unknown, but many world leaders said they held Russian
authorities ultimately responsible for his death.
“His death
in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the
weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built. Russia is
responsible for this,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said while at a
conference in Germany.
German
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Navalny “has probably now paid for this courage
with his life.”
Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was informed of Navalny’s death. The
opposition leader’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on X, the platform formerly
known as Twitter, that the team had no confirmation yet.
Shortly
after the death was reported, the Russian SOTA social media channel shared
images of the opposition politician reportedly in court yesterday. In the
footage, Navalny is seen standing up and is laughing and joking with the judge
via video link.
Navalny was
moved in December from a prison in central Russia to a “special regime” penal
colony — the highest security level of prisons in the country — above the Artic
Circle.
His allies
decried the transfer to a colony in the town of Kharp, in a region about 1,900
kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, as yet another attempt to force
Navalny into silence.
Before his
arrest, Navalny campaigned against official corruption, organized major
anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office.
In Putin’s
Russia, political opponents often faded amid factional disputes or went into
exile after imprisonment, suspected poisonings or other heavy repression. But
Navalny grew consistently stronger and reached the apex of the opposition
through grit, bravado and an acute understanding of how social media could
circumvent the Kremlin’s suffocation of independent news outlets.
He faced
each setback — whether it was a physical assault or imprisonment — with an
intense devotion, confronting dangers with a sardonic wit. That drove him to
the bold and fateful move of returning from Germany to Russia and certain
arrest.
Recently,
prison authorities have repeatedly put Navalny in a tiny cell to punish him for
minor infractions. Last month, he said in a statement relayed on social media
that he was placed in the cell after officials accused him of refusing to
“introduce himself in line with protocol.”
Placement
in the small cell means that prisoners are only allowed to walk outside in a
narrow concrete prison yard at 6:30 a.m. “Few things are as refreshing as a
walk in Yamal at 6:30 in the morning,” he wrote.
Navalny was
born in Butyn, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Moscow. He received a law
degree from People’s Friendship University in 1998 and did a fellowship at Yale
in 2010.
He gained
attention by focusing on corruption in Russia’s murky mix of politicians and
businesses; one of his early moves was to buy a stake in Russian oil and gas
companies to become an activist shareholder and push for transparency.
By
concentrating on corruption, Navalny’s work had a pocketbook appeal to
Russians’ widespread sense of being cheated, and he carried stronger resonance
than more abstract and philosophical concerns about democratic ideals and human
rights.
He was
convicted in 2013 of embezzlement on what he called a politically motivated
prosecution and was sentenced to five years in prison, but the prosecutor’s
office later surprisingly demanded his release pending appeal. A higher court
later gave him a suspended sentence.
The day
before the sentence, Navalny had registered as a candidate for Moscow mayor.
The opposition saw his release as the result of large protests in the capital
of his sentence, but many observers attributed it to a desire by authorities to
add a tinge of legitimacy to the mayoral election.
Navalny
finished second, an impressive performance against the incumbent who had the
backing of Putin’s political machine and was popular for improving the
capital’s infrastructure and aesthetics.
Navalny’s
popularity increased after the leading charismatic politician, Boris Nemtsov,
was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.
Whenever
Putin spoke about Navalny, he made it a point to never mention the activist by
name, referring to him as “that person” or similar wording, in an apparent
effort to diminish his importance.
Even in
opposition circles, Navalny was often viewed as having a overly nationalist
streak for supporting the rights of ethnic Russians — he supported the
annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Moscow in 2014 although most nations
viewed it as illegal — but he was able to mostly override those reservations
with the power of investigations conducted by his Fund for Fighting Corruption.
Although
state-controlled TV channels ignored Navalny, his investigations resonated with
younger Russians via YouTube videos and posts on his website and social media
accounts. The strategy helped him reach into the hinterlands far from the
political and cultural centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg and establish a
strong network of regional offices.
His work
broadened from focusing on corruption to wholescale criticism of the political
system under Putin. He was a central galvanizing figure in protests of
unprecedented size against dubious national election results and the exclusion
of independent candidates.
Navalny
understood that he could get attention with a pithy phrase and potent image.
His description of Putin’s power-base United Russia as “the party of crooks and
thieves” gained instant popularity; a lengthy investigation into then-Prime
Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s lavish country getaway boiled down to the complex’s
well-appointed duck house. Soon, comical yellow duck toys became a popular way
to mock the premier.
In 2017,
after an assailant threw green-hued disinfectant in his face, seriously
damaging one of his eyes, Navalny joked in a video blog that people were
comparing him to the comic book character The Hulk.
Much worse was to come
While
serving a jail sentence in 2019 for involvement in an election protest, he was
taken to the hospital with an illness that authorities said was an allergic
reaction, but some doctors said it appeared to be poisoning.
A year
later, on Aug. 20, 2020, he became severely ill on a flight to Moscow from the
Siberian city of Tomsk. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of
Omsk, where he spent two days in a hospital while supporters begged doctors to
allow him to be taken to Germany for treatment.
Once in
Germany, doctors determined he had been poisoned with a strain of Novichok –
similar to the nerve agent that nearly killed former Russian spy Sergei Skripal
and his daughter in England in 2018 and resulted in the death of another woman.
Navalny was
in a medically induced coma for about two weeks. His first communication while
recovering showed his defiant wit — an Instagram post saying that breathing on
one’s own is “a remarkable process that is underestimated by many. Strongly
recommended.”
The Kremlin
vehemently rejected it was behind the poisoning, but Navalny challenged the denial
with an audacious move — essentially a deadly serious prank phone call. He
released the recording of a call he said he made to an alleged member of a
group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly
carried out the poisoning and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the
recording as fake.
Russian
authorities then raised the stakes, announcing that during his time in Germany,
Navalny had violated the terms of a suspended sentence in one of his
convictions and that he would be arrested if he returned home.
Remaining
abroad wasn’t in his nature. Navalny and his wife boarded a plane for Moscow on
Jan. 17, 2021. On arrival, he told waiting journalists that he was pleased to
be back, walked to passport control and into custody. In just over two weeks,
he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 2½ years in prison.
The events
sparked massive protests that reached to Russia’s farthest corners and saw more
than 10,000 people detained by police.
As part of
a massive crackdown against the opposition that followed, a Moscow court in
2021 outlawed Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and about 40
regional offices as extremist, a verdict that exposed members of his team to
prosecution.
When Putin
sent troops to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Navalny strongly condemned the
war in social media posts from prison and during his court appearances.
Less than a
month after the start of the war, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year
term for embezzlement and contempt of court in a case he and his supporters
rejected as fabricated. The investigators immediately launched a new probe, and
in August 2023 Navalny was convicted on charges of extremism and sentenced to
19 years in prison.
After the
verdict, Navalny said he understood that he was “serving a life sentence, which
is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”
A
documentary called “Navalny” about his story won an Academy Award for best
documentary in March 2023.
Navalny’s
wife spoke at the award ceremony, saying: “My husband is in prison just for
telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy.
Alexei, I am dreaming of the day you will be free and our country will be
free.”
Besides his
wife, Navalny is survived by a son and a daughter.
International
agencies
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