Poisoned, convicted, died in prison. Alexei Navalny paid with his life for his fight against Vladimir Putin, tirelessly denouncing repression, corruption and the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine.
He was buried Friday in the presence of thousands of people after a religious service at an Orthodox church in southern Moscow, in a neighborhood where he once lived with his family.
A tribute to the authorities who for a time refused to return his body and which recalls the faith of the opponent, he who said he read the Bible in prison and had qualified “Jesus” as the best politician in history.
During his lifetime, Alexeï Navalny followed a long way of the cross, from his first legal troubles in the early 2010s, through his serious poisoning in 2020, then his imprisonment in increasingly harsh conditions, often in the isolation of the coward, and finally his death, at 47 years old.
Incarcerated since January 2021, last August he was given yet another sentence: 19 years for “extremism” to be spent in an Arctic colony, where he died on February 16.
“I love you even more”
However, prison had never dampened the determination and humor of this tall, blond, blue-eyed man. In his messages, he was ironic about the bullying that the prison administration inflicted on him, assured that everything would be fine, while trying to support his comrades in misfortune.
Imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny on a screen via video link from his penal colony during court hearings on the extremism criminal case against him, at the Supreme Court of Russia in Moscow on June 22, 2023 / Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP/Archives
During his last filmed hearing, the day before his death, he burst out laughing while asking the magistrate to send him money thanks to his “enormous salary as a federal judge”.
A day earlier, for Valentine’s Day, he had sent a note to his wife, Yulia Navalnaïa. “I feel that I am close to you, every second, and I love you even more.”
Since then, this woman who for years remained in his shadow has promised to continue her fight and to take the lead, in exile, of a Russian opposition methodically eradicated by the Kremlin.
For two years now, the repression has also affected critics of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which Alexei Navalny immediately condemned.
Fight against corruption
Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny in a court in Moscow, February 20, 2021 / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP/Archives
Born in 1976 near Moscow, to a military father from a Ukrainian village evacuated at the time of the Chernobyl disaster that occurred ten years later, Alexeï Navalny studied law and economics, before moving into politics .
He first campaigned in the liberal opposition, then became one of the leaders of major protest demonstrations in 2011 and 2012. In 2013, he came second in the municipal elections in Moscow, a feat amplifying his fame.
Harassed by the authorities, ignored by the state media, he nevertheless built a 2.0 notoriety with the broadcast of viral investigations denouncing the corruption of power.
He then managed to build a base among urban and connected youth, even if his popularity on a national and transgenerational scale remained limited.
He is also accused of having defended, at the end of the 2000s, nationalist and xenophobic ideas. He then erased these positions in his speech, focusing it on the fight against corruption, although he never clearly repudiated certain comments deemed racist by his detractors.
Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny and his wife Yulia at passport control at Sheremtyevo airport in Moscow, January 17, 2021 / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP/Archives
He was also singled out for his support for Russia’s invasion of part of Georgia in 2008, for which he would apologize years later. In Ukraine, it was its ambiguity on the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 2014 that caused a stain.
In February 2023, from his prison, he nevertheless called for reestablishing the borders of Ukraine fixed in 1991, therefore including this peninsula.
“Do not abandon !”
Despite the controversies, his case and his courage had become a symbol in the eyes of all Russian opponents and Westerners, after his poisoning in August 2020 in Siberia, in the middle of the campaign for regional elections.
On the verge of death, he was transferred to Germany for treatment, with the agreement of the Kremlin.
Recovered, Alexeï Navalny made a big comeback in December 2020 by trapping a Russian agent who admitted, on the telephone, that his poisoning was the work of the secret services.
In the process, refusing any exile, he returned to Moscow on January 17, 2021. As soon as he arrives, he is arrested.
Two days later, he carried out another coup: a video investigation in which Vladimir Putin is accused of having built a vast palace on the shores of the Black Sea.
A person watches an investigative film by Russian opponent Alexei Navalny showing a property on the Black Sea, which he says belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin, on January 25, 2021 in Moscow / Alexander NEMENOV / AFP/Archives
Its impact is such that the Russian president – who has never publicly mentioned Navalny’s name – must personally deny it.
These successes did not, however, shake the Kremlin.
But Alexei Navalny always maintained confidence in his people and their abilities. Like in a documentary in which he was asked to send a message to the Russians in the event that he was assassinated.
“Don’t give up!” he said. “We are a huge force under the yoke of bad guys because we don’t realize how strong we are. All evil needs to triumph is the inaction of good people.”
