If he had not been in prison, Alexei Navalny would have dedicated the last few months to trying to be a candidate in the presidential elections that in March will give, of course, Vladimir Putin his fifth term at the head of the Kremlin. Navalny, the most prominent figure of the opposition in the last decade, would not have won, but he would surely have caused a serious headache for the current Russian political elite, as he demonstrated in 2013, when in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood campaign, without access to television, was on the verge of forcing a second round in the Moscow mayoral elections.
After flirting with nationalism, the name of the young lawyer and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny began to be known in 2011 and 2012, during the opposition demonstrations after the legislative elections.
The always atomized Russian opposition managed to unite for a few months to mount the largest protests against Putin. They were not successful, but a figure appeared who, unlike the more veteran opponents, arrived without too many ideological burdens and, above all, had charisma and mobilized crowds in the streets.
With that fame, he managed to put together a team for the mayor of Moscow. But it would be the last adventure that the authorities would allow him. After the scare that the ruling party received, problems began for Navalni. Accusations and a conviction for fraud, which he and his followers claimed were false, prevented him from challenging Putin at the polls in the future.
For the past decade, state media ignored him and senior Russian officials, including Putin, avoided saying his name. For this reason, he took his fight to the streets and to social networks, where he published investigation videos to denounce the corruption of power.
Furthermore, those years were an obstacle course for Navalny, plagued by administrative arrests for organizing unauthorized demonstrations.
Until 2020 arrived, the year of the Covid pandemic and the year of the constitutional reform that has allowed Putin to remain in power beyond 2024. The opponent was poisoned during a trip to Siberia. According to Western laboratories, they had tried to kill him with a Novichok-type nerve agent, created for military purposes in Soviet times.
The Kremlin allowed him to be sent to Berlin, where he saved his life and spent months recovering.
But during his stay, judicial authorities issued an arrest warrant against him for violating the probation of his fraud conviction. It was clear that if he returned he would be arrested and sent to prison. Even so, he decides that his place is in his country, and in January 2021 he announces his return. On January 17, as soon as he set foot at the Moscow airport, the police detained him.
A month later, the courts changed his probation to two and a half years in prison. He has been in prison since then.
But in a sense he was a free man. His return to Russia emboldened disaffected Russians, who in their tens of thousands took to the streets in more than a hundred cities. The repressive machine accelerated to stop the only opponent who was keeping the Kremlin awake at night, and thousands of protesters were arrested.
In 2022, Navalny is found guilty of “fraud” and contempt and sentenced to nine years in prison. And in August 2023 he adds 19 more years for “extremism.”
But he didn’t let himself be crushed. Therein lay his freedom. She took advantage of the slightest opportunity to send messages to social networks through his collaborators. And he raised his voice in court sessions, lately from prison by videoconference, to criticize issues such as the military intervention in Ukraine. He has not been able to run for office, but from prison he has participated in the campaign. In December he called on Russians to support any candidate other than Putin.
