Russian prison authorities blamed Navalny's death on a blood clot, but his doctor said he had no symptoms that would make that a likely cause. No matter what his death certificate says, he was murdered by Vladimir Putin. The Russian president imprisoned him. Mr. Navalny was subjected to a regime of forced labor and solitary confinement in his name. Navalny will be hailed as a man of outstanding courage. His life will be remembered for what was said about Mr. Putin, what it suggests for Russia, and what Russia demands of the world.
Mr. Navalny, a man of formidable intelligence, pointed to the two foundations on which Mr. Putin has built his power: fear and greed. In Putin's world, anyone can be bribed or threatened. Mr. Navalny not only understood these impulses, but attacked them in devastating ways.
His insight was that corruption was not just a side effect, but a moral rot at the heart of Mr. Putin's state. His anti-corruption campaign created a new genre of perfectly documented thriller-like films showing the yachts, villas and planes of Russia's rulers. The videos, posted on YouTube, culminated in the reveal of Putin's $1 billion palace on the Black Sea coast and were viewed 130 million times. Despite the palace's iron gates emblazoned with the imperial double-headed eagle, Mr. Navalny painted its owner not as an emperor but as a sinister mafia boss.
Navalny also understood fear and how to overcome it. Putin's first attempted murder was in 2020, when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, which was smeared inside his underwear. Through sheer luck, Mr. Navalny survived, regained power in Germany, and returned to Moscow less than a year later, rebelling against Mr. Putin amid much publicity.
He returned knowing that he would probably be arrested. On his way back to confront the evil ruler who tried to poison him, he did not read Hamlet. He watched the American cartoon “Rick and Morty.'' He undermined Putin by mocking him. “I fatally wounded him by surviving,” he said from the defendant's stand during his 2021 trial. “He will go down in history as a poisoner. We had Yaroslav the Wise and Alexander the Liberator, and now we will have Vladimir the Poisoner.” Pants. “
Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison for extremism. He turned his sentence into a cheerful act of defiance. Every time he appeared at court hearings via video link from his prison, his smile pierced the walls of his cell and beamed across Russia's 11 time zones. On February 15, the night before his death, he appeared in court again. Dressed in a dark gray prison uniform, he laughed before Mr Putin's judges and suggested he should put some money into his account because he was running out of money. In the end, there was only one way to wipe the smile from Putin's face.
In his 1974 essay “Living Without Lies,” Nobel Prize-winning Soviet novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “When violence invades a peaceful life, its face becomes like a flag. Shining with confidence,” he wrote. And he cried out, “I am violent. Run, get out of the way–I'll destroy you.'' ” Navalny understood, but instead of running away, he stood his ground.
His great strength was his ability to understand Mr. Putin's fear of the courage of others. In one of his early communications from prison, he wrote: “It is not honest people who scare the authorities…it is people who are not afraid, or more precisely, people who may be afraid but have overcome their fear.”
That is why his death portends deepening repression within Russia. Navalny's killing was not the first, nor will it be the last. The next possible targets could be Ilya Yashin, the brave politician who followed Navalny to prison, or the historians, journalists and politicians who were sentenced to 25 years for treason for opposing the war. It could be Vladimir Kara-Murza. Lawyers and activists who continue to defend these dissidents are also at risk. Since Putin returned to power in 2012, the number of prisoners has increased 15 times. Professional criminals are being recruited and released to fight in Ukraine, even as the remnants of Stalin's concentration camps are filled with political prisoners.
Navalny's death also casts a shadow on ordinary Russians. In Moscow and across Russia, people rushed to the streets after hearing the news. Before police began making arrests, they covered monuments to past victims of political repression with flowers. But the repression is intensifying. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, 1,305 men and women have been charged with speaking out against the war. The wave of repression is engulfing even people who have never been politically involved. The president will fire into the crowd if necessary.
For Western countries, Navalny's death carries a call to action. Putin believes leaders are too weak and too decadent to resist him. And over the years, Western politicians and businessmen have gone to great lengths to prove that fear and greed work in the West, too. When Mr. Putin first bombed and shelled Chechnya in the early 2000s, Western politicians turned a blind eye and continued making deals with his cronies. They gave him a slap on the wrist in 2014 when he killed opponents in Moscow and annexed Crimea. Even after he invaded Ukraine in 2022, he balked at providing enough weapons to defeat Russia. Every time the West retreated, Mr. Putin took a step forward. He grinned whenever Western politicians expressed “grave concerns.”
Western countries need to find the strength and courage that Mr. Navalny showed. Understand that the killing of Mr. Navalny, the proliferation of political prisoners, the torture and beating of people across Russia, the assassination of Mr. Putin's opponents in Europe, and the shelling of Ukrainian cities are all part of the same war. should. Without determination, the West's military and economic superiority means nothing.
Western governments should start by treating people like Kara-Murza as Mr. Putin's prisoners of war, who must be exchanged with Russian or Ukrainian prisoners of war in the West. We should not stigmatize ordinary Russians living under a paranoid dictator and his henchmen, nor should we hold ordinary Russians responsible for overthrowing the dictators who oppress them.
The best way to fight back against Mr. Putin is to give Ukraine arms. Russia is relieved every time the U.S. Congress rejects aid. Leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference must hear Navalny's wife, Yulia, speak of her justice for her husband's death and strengthen their resolve to see the war through. Ukrainian politicians need to understand that standing up for Russian activists and prisoners of war is also a way to help their country, just as Navalny has called for peace, rebuilding Ukraine, and prosecuting Russian war crimes. There is. Freeing Ukraine is also the best way to free Russia.
The journey ends
After being poisoned, Navalny returned home believing that history was on his side and that Russia was freeing itself from the deadly grip of its imperial past. “Putin is the last chord of the Soviet Union,” he said. economist A few months before he embarked on his final fateful journey. “The people in the Kremlin know that there are historical trends working against them.” Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine and killed Mr. Navalny to reverse that trend.
Mr. Navalny will not want Mr. Putin's message to prevail. “[If I get killed] “The obvious thing is, don't give up,” he once told American filmmakers. “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. There is no need for them to do nothing.”
Navalny's death had seemed imminent for months. Still, there's something shocking about it. He was not alone in believing that good triumphs over evil and that heroes defeat villains. His courage was an inspiration. It is a terrible affront to see the moral order so brutally subverted.
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