If he had not been in prison, Aleksei Navalni would have spent the last few months trying to be a candidate in the presidential elections that will, of course, give Vladimir Putin his fifth term at the head of the Kremlin in March. Navalny, the most prominent figure in 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, came close to forcing a runoff in the Moscow mayoral election.
After flirting with nationalism, the name of the young lawyer and anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalni began to be known between 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 anti-Putin protests. They did not succeed, but a figure appeared who, unlike the more veteran opponents, arrived without many ideological burdens and, above all, had charisma and mobilized crowds in the street.
With this fame, he managed to put together a team for the mayor of Moscow. But it would be the last adventure the authorities would allow him. After the scare that swept the officialdom, problems began for Navalni. Accusations and a fraud conviction, which he and his supporters said 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 speaking his name. For this reason, he took his fight to the streets and to social networks, where he published videos of investigations to denounce the corruption of power.
In addition, those years were an obstacle course for Navalni, filled with administrative arrests for having organized unauthorized demonstrations.
Until 2020 arrived, the year of the covid pandemic and the year of the constitutional reform that has allowed Putin to continue 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 nerve agent of the Novichok type, created for military purposes in Soviet times.
The Kremlin allowed him to be sent to Berlin, where he saved his life and spent months recuperating. But during his stay, judicial authorities issued a warrant for his arrest for violating parole on 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 that he is coming back. On January 17, as soon as he set foot in the Moscow airport, the police arrested him.
A month later, the courts changed his probation to two and a half years in prison. He has been in prison ever since.
But in a sense he was a free man. The return to Russia emboldened discontented Russians, who took to the streets in tens of thousands in more than a hundred cities. The repressive machine sped up to slow down the only opposition that was tormenting the Kremlin, and thousands of protesters were arrested.
In 2022 Navalni is found guilty of “fraud” and contempt and sentenced to nine years in prison. August 2023 adds 19 more years for “extremism”. But he was not crushed. Here resided his freedom. He used the slightest opportunity to send messages on social networks through his collaborators. And he raised his voice in court sessions, most recently from prison via video conference, to criticize issues such as the military intervention in Ukraine. He has not been able to stand in the elections, but since prison he has participated in the campaign. In December he called on Russians to support any candidate other than Putin.
