Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny reported: died On Friday, the 47-year-old spoke under the dark conditions of a brutal prisoner of war camp, slamming strongman Vladimir Putin and the corruption of Russia’s elite.
Navalny, himself imprisoned on corruption charges, is believed to have died while walking after surviving an assassination attempt by Putin’s regime using chemical weapons.
Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny is son A Soviet military officer and economist who spent much of his youth in his father’s military camp. He frequently visits his grandmother in Chernobyl, and the government’s cover-up of the horrific nuclear disaster there in 1986 appears to have been a formative experience for him.
Navalny grew up to become a lawyer and received a degree from Moscow People’s Friendship University in 1998. Three years later he received a degree in economics, and while studying for that degree he joined the pro-democracy and pro-market party Navalny. Yabloko. Navalny was expelled from Yabloko in 2007 for engaging in banned “nationalist activities,” which he said was a power play by rivals seeking party influence.
Putin critic and Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny dies in Arctic penal colony, Russia announces https://t.co/OTrJFtN5rI
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 16, 2024
Navalny took a tougher stance. nationalistic tone early in his political career. Among other positions, he is called He supported Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, saying it was deporting immigrants from Russia to preserve ethnic integrity, and his criticism of President Putin’s annexation of Crimea was rather subtle.
Navalny Said In 2014, he announced his disapproval of the annexation of Crimea, but the post-Putin government could not simply return Crimea to the Ukrainians, and that position was not liked by the Ukrainians. He softened some of his nationalist positions in later years, or at least stopped taking them, but that seemed to make it difficult for him to build broader political alliances. .
Navalny’s resignation from Yabloko was the first of many times he has claimed to be accused of politically motivated wrongdoing. Such accusations became more frequent as he reported on corruption in Russia’s elite and became a relentless critic of President Vladimir Putin. took power In 2000.
Mr. Navalny has achieved some major victories over the past two decades. During Putin’s brief interregnum, when Dmitry Medvedev was Russian president, Navalny’s persistent criticism forced Medvedev to admit that corrupt bureaucrats were embezzling more than $30 billion a year from the state treasury. Ta.
President Putin quickly returned to the saddle. rewrite The Russian constitution was amended to effectively make him president for life. Navalny launched an anti-corruption website that attracts 1 million visitors a month. He called Putin’s United Russia a “party of swindlers and thieves,” and it stuck.
File/Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is present in the courtroom of the Moscow City Court via video link from prison during the hearing of his appeal against the nine-year prison sentence handed down in March after his conviction. appear on the screen. Indicted on charges of embezzlement and contempt of court in Moscow, May 17, 2022 (Kiril Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
Mr. Navalny was able to fill the streets of Russian cities with. protester Many times. Protests were broken up by mass arrests, which invariably included Alexei Navalny. He joked about his arrest in social media posts and media interviews.he was still there wise He was sent to a penal colony in the North Pole, where he died.
One of Navalny’s first major protest marches was against election fraud in 2011. Despite the vote being heavily rigged to keep Putin in power, Navalny managed to keep United Russia to less than half of the vote. He ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and was quickly elected. declared Sentenced to five years in prison for embezzlement in a politicized trial.
Navalny and his brother Oleg accused He is accused of embezzling approximately $500,000 from a state-run timber company in 2009 while serving as an advisor to Governor Kirov. inherited When Oleg was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, Navalny shouted: Why imprison him? This is a dirty trick. Want more punishment? ”
Navalny was released after international condemnation and massive street protests over his arrest. finished Although the vote share was high at 27 percent, it was not enough to force the incumbent Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, into a run-off. Navalny’s campaign accuses Sobyanin of rigging the vote to avoid a run-off.
Putin’s government reached a settlement with Navalny’s suspended sentence, which kept him free, but effectively barred him from running for president, making it clear that Putin’s government was “maintaining the fiction of an opposition party.” ”.managed democracy” or “unchanging competition.”
Putin sometimes set up Unlucky punching bag opponent To challenge him in a dubious election, he could legally bar genuine opposition leaders like Mr. Navalny from challenging his power, while packing votes into the ballot box if necessary to ensure his victory. The difference will ensure that it makes the headlines and it will “win” by a large margin.When Navalny tried to run for president in 2018, his embezzlement conviction called to disqualify him.
Navalny stepped up anti-corruption efforts as head of a nonprofit organization he founded in 2011 called the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK in Russian). FBK’s YouTube videos received millions of hits. One of FBK’s 2017 videos, accusing incumbent Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption, garnered 7 million views and prompted tens of thousands of people to march in the streets. Navalny has made a point of marching with his supporters, but has been repeatedly arrested for doing so.
Other members of FBK also attempted to run for the Moscow City Council in 2019, but were banned from participating in the elections, further escalating street protests. Navalny has developed a strategy called “smart voting,” which essentially means “voting for anyone other than President Putin’s United Russia party.” He used it many times over the years to weaken the power of United Russia.
In August 2020, Navalny flew back to Moscow after working with activists in Siberia. mysterious disease, sweat profusely and lose consciousness. Navalny’s team immediately suspected he had been poisoned. Navalny’s plane made an emergency landing in Siberia, and he was briefly hospitalized, breathing with a ventilator.
Late on Tuesday, May 8, 2012, the day after Putin’s inauguration as president, prominent anti-corruption whistleblower and blogger Alexei Navalny was detained by file/police during a protest in Moscow. (AP Photo/Sergei Ponomarev, File)
Navalny’s friends and family have insisted he is not safe in Russia, especially after Siberian doctors blithely claimed they found no trace of the toxin in his system.he was there transferred He was taken to a hospital in Germany, where doctors quickly determined he had been poisoned with a deadly nerve agent called Novichok. Novichok was the same poison Russia used on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain in 2018.
Navalny survived and claimed in December 2020 that he had survived. deceive An employee of Russia’s FSB Security Service has admitted to being part of the unit that followed Navalny during his trip to Siberia and placed Novichok in his underwear.
Navalny Came back He arrived in Moscow from Germany in January 2021, knowing full well that he would be arrested on arrival. The Russian government charged him with violating his probation in a 2013 embezzlement case and detained him at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. He was held in extended “pretrial detention” and sentenced in February 2021 to two and a half years in prison for parole violation.
While imprisoned in January, Mr. Navrany’s investigative team released a video, the most provocative corruption report to date. expose The lavish “billion dollar Putin Palace” structure in southern Russia was allegedly built by oligarchs who wanted to demonstrate loyalty to their authoritarian ruler. The palace was the size of a small city and equipped to indulge in all of Putin’s expensive hobbies: winemaking, ice skating, tennis and movies. There was even a nightclub with a stripper pole, which Navalny sarcastically suggested might have been a “firefighter training ground.”
“My friends, who received from President Putin the right to steal whatever they wanted in Russia, were very grateful to him. But they also cooperated, collected 100 billion rubles, and with that money built a palace for their boss.” said Navalny.
“They will continue to steal more and more until they bankrupt the whole country. Russia sells a lot of oil, gas, metals, fertilizers, and timber, but Putin has a palace, so the people’s income is “It continues to decline,” he warned.
The revelations infuriated Putin’s government, which sent Mr. Navalny to increasingly harsh prisons and imposed more charges and sentences. Other groups connected to NBK and Navalny are: outlawed Mr. Navalny’s allies then relaunched the NBK as an international organization with American and European members.
when he was declared Navalny will be sentenced to an additional nine years in prison for embezzlement in March 2022, quoted from an American TV program. wire: “I’ve only been doing it for two days. That’s the day you go in and the day you come out.”
“I even had a T-shirt with this slogan on it, but the prison authorities confiscated it in view of print extremism,” he added.
Navalny Had disappeared For most of December 2023, his friends and allies were in great alarm. He was secretly transported near the end of the month and reappeared at an arctic prisoner of war camp known as Polar Wolf.
In January 2023, hundreds of Russian doctors signed In a letter to President Putin, he called on him to “stop the abuse” of Navalny, whose health was deteriorating in prison.
FILE/Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears in a video link from prison provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary at the Moscow City Court, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlyanichenko)
“It’s almost impossible to get to this colony. It’s almost impossible to even send a letter there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world,” said Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief strategist. Stated. When Navalny regained access to social media, joke About getting frostbite and becoming Father Frost, Russia’s terrifying version of Santa Claus.
“Due to the conditions and condition of Mr. Alexei Navalny’s detention, we are extremely concerned for his life and health. From a medical point of view, it is clear that Mr. Alexei is not receiving adequate medical assistance.” said the doctors, signing the letter with their full names in an extremely rare example of public criticism of President Putin.
This plea fell on deaf ears, and Mr. Navalny reportedly died The animal reportedly collapsed at Polar Wolf Camp on Friday after complaining of not feeling well after a walk. The prison claimed that medical teams attempted to resuscitate him but were unsuccessful. Navalny appeared to be healthy and energetic. video Court appearance on Thursday.
President Putin did not comment on Navalny’s death, but the Kremlin said he was informed while he was traveling in the Ural Mountains to visit a factory. Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, said she was unsure whether Mr. Navalny was really dead because “President Putin and his government are constantly lying.”
