Resolved to bring Putin to account
Alexei Navalny
Opposition leader and activist
BORN JUNE 4, 1976 – DIED FEBRUARY 16, 2024, AGED 47
UNTIL his sudden death in an Arctic Circle jail, Alexei Navalny had survived assassination attempts and violent assaults as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic. The founding opposition leader of Russia of the Future, once called Putin’s party “crooks and thieves”, and came perilously close to death in 2020, falling unwell on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. After an emergency landing, he spent two days in hospital before transferring to Germany where doctors concluded he had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.
After a fortnight in an induced coma, Navalny’s first Instagram post said breathing unaided was “a remarkable process underestimated by many. Strongly recommended.”
It was a typically witty response from the charismatic anti-corruption campaigner who charmed young, urbanite followers via his savvy social media presence even when his political objectives lacked focus.
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny was born in the village of Butyn, near Moscow. His father, Anatoly, was an army officer from Ukraine, and his mother, Lyudmila, was a microelectronics lab technician. They later bought a basket-weaving factory. Navalny learned Ukrainian during long summers with his grandmother near Kyiv.
He gained a law degree at People’s Friendship University in 1998 and joined the socio-liberal political party Yabloko in 2000, his star rising steadily until he was fired in 2007 for his nationalistic views.
At this time, Navalny had called for tighter immigration and referred to Georgians as “rats”, a rhetoric at odds with his later cultivated image of being a human rights champion.
In a bid to unearth corruption, he bought shareholder stakes in Russian oil and gas companies and exposed secret profit-makers.
In 2013 he was facing five years in jail on embezzlement charges, but the day before his sentence he registered his interest in standing as a Moscow mayoral candidate and claimed the charge was politically motivated. He appealed, received a suspended sentence and ramped up his political activities.
In 2017, he was partially blinded in one eye after being attacked with a green substance. He was barred from the 2018 presidential election and jailed for anti-Kremlin activity.
Arrested on his return to Russia in 2021 and sentenced on trumped up charges of extremism, he was sentenced in 2023 to 19 years and sent to Polar Wolf prison – one of Russia’s toughest – inside the Arctic Circle. His cause of death is yet to be determined.
Navalny is survived by wife Yulia, whom he married in 2000, and their daughter Daria, and son, Zakhar.