MOSCOW —
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, passed away on friday after collapsing and losing consciousness in the penal colony in the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long sentence, the Russian prison service reported.
Opposition leader
Navalny, 47, became the leading figure in Russia’s fragmented opposition.
His supporters present him as the Russian version of the South African Nelson Mandela, who would one day be released from prison to lead the country.
He earned the admiration of many in Russian opposition circles for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he underwent treatment. Western laboratory tests showed that an attempt was made to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.
Rise to fame
Navalny, a lawyer, rose to fame thanks to his blogs, in which he exposed elite corruption and described Russia as a country ruled by “thieves and scoundrels.”
He participated in Russian nationalist marches in the 2000s. Calls for immigration restrictions and criticism for what some considered his overly nationalist views led to his expulsion from the opposition Liberal party in 2007.
He mocked President Vladimir Putin’s elite and highlighted the opulence of top officials’ lifestyles, using the Internet and even drones to illustrate what he described as their vast possessions and luxury properties.
When anti-Putin demonstrations broke out in December 2011, following an election marred by allegations of fraud, he was one of the first protest leaders detained.
Navalny said Russia could face seismic political upheaval, even a revolution, because he said Putin had built a fragile system of personal rule based on flattery and corruption.
People gathered at the monument to the victims of political repression in St. Petersburg following the death of Alexei Navalny.
What does the Kremlin say?
The Kremlin said Putin had been informed of his death.
The Kremlin rejected Navalny’s accusations of Putin’s massive corruption and personal wealth. Navalny’s movement is banned and most of his key allies have fled Russia and now live in Europe.
Russian authorities call Navalny an extremist and puppet of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which, according to them, is trying to sow the seeds of revolution to weaken Russia and turn it into a client state of the West.
Navalny was arrested countless times for organizing public rallies, and repeatedly prosecuted on charges including corruption, embezzlement and fraud. According to him, the accusations and convictions were politically motivated.
In 2023, Navalny was sentenced to a further 19 years in prison in a maximum security penal colony, in a case he claimed was designed to cow the Russian people into political submission.
Poisoning
In August 2020, Navalny fell ill on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow. The pilot made an emergency landing, saving his life, and Navalny was flown to Berlin, where he was treated for the effects of a neurotoxin that German military tests showed was Novichok, a poison developed in the Soviet Union.
Putin criticized a joint media investigation that claimed to have identified a team of assassins from the Russian security service FSB. “If someone had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off,” he said.
Family
Navalny’s wife is Yulia. Her daughter is called Darya and her son is Zakhar.
A supporter holds a photo of Navalny and his family outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.
What Navalny said about the Ukrainian war
“This is a stupid war that Putin started,” Navalny told an appeals court in Moscow via video link from a corrective penal colony in 2022. “This war was built on lies.”
“A madman has put his claws in Ukraine and I don’t know what this crazy thief wants to do with it.”
What Navalny said about Putin
“Corruption is the basis of contemporary Russia, it is the basis of Mr. Putin’s political power,” Navalny told Reuters in an interview in 2011.
What Navalny said about Russia
“The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy once described the power structure in Russia: ‘the villains who robbed their own people gathered together, recruited soldiers and judges to watch over their orgy, and now they are feasting.'” This brilliant quote accurately describes what is happening in our country.
In 2023, he criticized the Russian elite for its venality, expressing hatred towards those who he claimed squandered a historic opportunity for reform after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
He dissected Russia’s post-Soviet history, including the legacies of the most powerful figures of the 1990s, who became known as the reformers who attempted to lay the foundations of capitalism and the oligarchs who made fabulous fortunes.
“I cannot help but fiercely and savagely hate those who sold, wasted and squandered the historic opportunity our country had in the early 1990s,” Navalny said.
FILE – Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Navalny speaks to journalists after a court hearing in the city of Kirov.
What Navalny said about fear and ambition
“Why should I be afraid?” he said in 2011 when asked about the dangers of challenging the Kremlin.
When Reuters Asked about his ambition, he winced, but said: “I would like to be president, but there are no elections in Russia.”
What Navalny said about death
“If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong and that we have to use that power and not give up,” he once told CNN. “We don’t realize how strong we really are.”
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