Russian lawyer and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny has become the most prominent voice against President Vladimir Putin, a mission that has led to him being sent to a high-security prisoner of war camp, Interfax reported. However, he died. He was 47 years old.
Prison authorities said Friday that Navalny fell ill during a walk and medical staff were unable to revive him, Interfax news agency reported. The cause of death has not been disclosed.
advertisement
Continue reading below
In December, Navalny's friends and lawyers warned on social media that they had lost contact with him. He then turned up at a remote Arctic prisoner of war camp, where he disappeared for about three weeks after being transferred from a prison on the outskirts of Moscow.
In addition to eliminating President Putin's most charismatic and popular opponent, Navalny's death would leave the Kremlin and Western capitals already in their worst state in decades due to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This is sure to further heighten tensions between the two parties.
Navalny published the findings of an investigation into corruption in state enterprises through the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which was widely disseminated on social media despite a virtual blackout of Russian state media. He nearly won the Moscow mayoral race and unsuccessfully tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election.
He first rose to fame in a February 2011 radio interview in which he captured the public mood by calling the pro-Putin ruling United Russia party a party of “swindlers and thieves.” By the end of the year, Mr. Navalny had emerged as a leading figure opposed to President Vladimir Putin and his government, as street protests intensified over allegations of massive fraud in parliamentary elections.
Navalny continued to disrupt the regime by creating elaborate YouTube videos exposing the lavish lifestyles of senior officials, garnering millions of views. He created a huge sensation in 2017 when he released a video showing a luxurious mansion believed to belong to then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, viewed by more than 25 million Russians. The prime minister's high-ranking rivals are suspected of leaking information against him and using information against him.
nerve agent
In August 2020, Navalny narrowly survived a nerve agent attack, which he and Western governments blamed on President Vladimir Putin's secret services. After receiving treatment in Germany, he returned to Russia in January 2021, despite knowing he would be imprisoned, and was immediately detained.
“This is my home,” Navalny said in his last moments of freedom before being taken into custody by Russian authorities. “There's nothing to be afraid of.”
Navalny was imprisoned three times for a total of more than 30 years.
Navalny reported worsening health problems in prison and accused authorities of denying him proper treatment.
Before being transferred, he was being held in the notorious IK-2 prison, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow.
Concerns about his health began to emerge in August 2022 after prison authorities repeatedly placed him in a punishment cell for minor rule violations. Recently, his allies accused authorities of slowly poisoning him, possibly through prison food, and causing him to lose weight rapidly.
Navalny”, a 2022 film about the poisoning and imprisonment of an activist, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary last March. His wife Yulia Navalnaya and two children Darya and Zakhar attended the ceremony in Los Angeles and accepted the award on stage with the filmmaker.
“My husband is in prison simply because he told the truth. My husband is in prison simply because he defended democracy,” Yulia Navalnaya said. “Alexei, I dream of the day when you will be free and our country will be free too. Be strong, my love.”
Mr. Navalny was born on June 4, 1976, on the outskirts of Moscow, the son of a Soviet military officer, and grew up in a series of closed military towns.
He took an active part in city politics early in his career, attending nationalist rallies and recording an anti-immigrant video that resurfaced as part of an effort to discredit him after his 2021 imprisonment.
advertisement
Continue reading below
crime of fraud
In 2012, a year after founding the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Navalny was indicted on fraud charges for stealing timber from a state-owned company. The intermittent investigations date back to 2009, when Navalny was an adviser to Kirov's governor. Navalny has denied his charges.
After convicting Navalny, Russian authorities unexpectedly released him on appeal. This allowed him to run for Moscow's mayoral election in September 2013, giving the election legitimacy. He received 27% of the vote, almost forcing a run-off with Putin's ally Sergei Sobyanin.
After months of house arrest, Navalny was jailed in December 2014 despite being convicted of fraud for a second time as the Kremlin sought to avoid turning him into a martyr. avoided.
Navalny's political campaign against Putin intensified. He opened campaign offices around the country to register as a presidential candidate in the 2018 presidential election to challenge his longtime leader, but officials said his fraud conviction ( This attempt was doomed to failure, as the 2017 retrial ruled that he was ineligible to participate in the presidential election. Race.
Still, the Kremlin's perception of Navalny's threat changed after he defended his “smart voting” tactics in the election and encouraged voters to support opponents with the best chance of defeating the ruling party's candidates. . This tactic had limited success, but it upset a regime long accustomed to controlling election results.
“Blogger”
President Putin and his top officials have consistently sought to downplay the importance of opposition leaders, refusing to call them by name and dismissing them as “bloggers.”
The pressure on Mr. Navalny has become even more intense and dangerous. He was nearly blind in one eye and had to undergo treatment overseas after an unidentified assailant threw a chemical into his face in 2017.
Navalny's appeal continues to grow amid protests in Russia following President Putin's decision in 2018 to support raising the retirement age and the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Ta.
Navalny survived a nerve agent injury and died on a plane from Siberia to Moscow in August 2020, where he was campaigning for an opposition candidate. His survival depended in part on the pilot's decision to make an emergency landing, prompt medical treatment by paramedics on the ground, and expert treatment in Germany. The apparent assassination attempt made Mr. Navalny an even more powerful symbol.
Shortly after his arrest, a video was released highlighting Navalny's return to Russia from Germany after recovery from prison, and the $1.35 billion Black Sea palace he claims belongs to Putin. This further fueled public anger. President Putin denied any connection with the luxury mansion.
“I don't regret anything,” Navalny said in a letter from prison in 2021 to journalist friend Evgenia Arbats. “Everything will be fine, and even if it isn't, we can take solace in the fact that we were honest people.”
© 2024 Bloomberg
