The main leader of the Russian opposition of the last decade, 47-year-old lawyer Alexei Navalny, has died suddenly in the Arctic penal colony where he was imprisoned. His death occurs just a month before the presidential elections, where his great enemy, President Vladimir Putin, aspires to a landslide victory in elections without opposition representatives.
Navalny was serving several prison sentences totaling more than three decades of deprivation of liberty in sentences that his followers consider fabricated to remove him from politics and as punishment for his criticism of the Kremlin. Since last December he had been admitted to a penal colony in the Arctic.
In the last video we have of him, recorded in January by the security cameras of the IK-3 prison, nicknamed ‘Polar Wolf’ due to the difficult weather conditions, Navalni appeared joking and in good humor and told journalists that he They were interviewed in a videoconference that they had not yet received any Christmas letters because the prison was “quite far away.”
With a degree in business law, Navalni, married with two children, began his activism by buying shares in semi-public companies since 2007 to access their accounts and demand their transparency. That same year, he was excluded from the liberal opposition party Yabloko due to his ultranationalist positions.
On his Rospil website, he tracks corruption in the administration since 2010. In the winter of 2011, he led the protest movement against the legislative elections, won by the ruling party, and managed to call the largest demonstrations ever seen since Putin’s arrival in office. power in 2000. For this reason he was arrested and received his first prison sentences, but far from stopping he created the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).
There would begin his problems with justice, which have not ceased until his death. In 2013 he was sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling money from Kirovles, a logging operation in the Kirov region (west). After denouncing a political trial, he obtained a suspended sentence on appeal.
That same year he ran for mayor of Moscow, achieving 27.2% of the votes against the outgoing mayor, who was close to Putin. Two years later, his party, the Progress Party, was banned.
In 2017, he published an investigation on YouTube in which he accused Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev of leading a real estate empire financed by oligarchs. The video provokes demonstrations of indignation and thousands of people take to the streets brandishing rubber ducks, in reference to a miniature house that the dolls would have in one of Medvedev’s residences.
In 2018 he ran for president, but the electoral commission declared him ineligible due to his conviction in the Kirovles affair.
On August 20, 2020, he was on the verge of death after being poisoned. Hospitalized in serious condition in Siberia, he was transferred in a coma to Berlin at the request of his relatives. On September 2, Berlin concluded that he had been poisoned with a “Novichok-type” substance, a neurotoxic product developed for military purposes during the Soviet era. Navalny accuses Putin of being behind his poisoning.
Returning to Russia after his convalescence, he was arrested upon landing in Moscow on January 17, 2021, prompting tens of thousands of supporters to demonstrate.
Far from being intimidated, his entourage divulges a scoop about a palace built by Putin on the shores of the Black Sea. The investigation accumulates tens of millions of views on YouTube and the president is forced to deny its veracity.
On February 2, 2021, the courts convert his previous pardon for “fraud” into a final sentence of two and a half years and Navalny is sent to a penal colony 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Demonstrations of support end with more than 10,000 arrests and his anti-corruption organization FBK is closed on charges of “extremism.”
On October 20, 2021, he received the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament for his defense of freedom of thought. But Russia adds him to the list of “terrorists and extremists.”
Found guilty of “fraud” and “contempt of court”, on March 22, 2022, he was sentenced to nine years in prison and transferred to a prison located 250 kilometers east of Moscow, from where he criticized the invasion of Ukraine.
On August 4, 2023, he received another sentence, this time 19 years in prison, for “extremism.” On December 7, Navalny asked from prison to vote against Putin in the elections on March 17 and announced the launch of a website (neputin.org) that asked Russians to support any candidate for the presidency. except Putin.
On December 25, his spokesman announced that he had been transferred to the Kharp prison colony, in the Russian Arctic, 2,000 kilometers from Moscow. He himself assured the next day on social networks that he was fine.
