© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny pays respect to founding father of Russia’s oldest human rights group and Sakharov Prize winner Lyudmila Alexeyeva in Moscow, Russia December 11, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
By Man Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most outstanding opposition chief, died on Friday after collapsing and shedding consciousness on the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle the place he was serving an extended jail time period, the Russian jail service mentioned.
OPPOSITION LEADER
Navalny, 47, grew to become the main determine amongst Russia’s splintered opposition.
Supporters forged him as a Russian model of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela who would someday be free of jail to steer the nation.
He earned admiration from many in Russian opposition circles for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, the place he underwent therapy for what Western laboratory assessments confirmed was an try to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.
RISE TO PROMINENCE
A former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence with blogs which uncovered what he mentioned was huge corruption throughout the Russian elite, describing Russia as dominated by “crooks and thieves”.
He participated in Russian nationalist marches within the 2000s. Requires restrictions on immigration and criticism over what some considered as his overly nationalist views prompted his expulsion from the liberal Yabloko opposition celebration in 2007.
He lampooned President Vladimir Putin’s elite and uncovered a number of the opulence of the existence of senior officers, utilizing the web and even drones as an instance what he described as their huge holdings and luxurious property.
When demonstrations in opposition to Putin flared in December 2011, after an election tainted by fraud accusations, he was one of many first protest leaders arrested.
Navalny lengthy forecast Russia might face seismic political turmoil, together with revolution, as a result of he mentioned Putin had constructed a brittle system of non-public rule reliant on sycophancy and corruption.
WHAT DOES THE KREMLIN SAY?
The Kremlin mentioned Putin had been knowledgeable of his demise.
The Kremlin dismissed Navalny’s allegations of huge corruption and Putin’s private wealth. Navalny’s motion is outlawed and most of his senior allies have fled Russia and now stay in Europe.
Russian officers forged Navalny as an extremist who was a puppet of the U.S. CIA intelligence company which they are saying is intent on attempting to sow the seeds of revolution to weaken Russia and make it a shopper state of the West.
Navalny was detained numerous occasions for organising public rallies, and prosecuted repeatedly on costs together with corruption, embezzlement and fraud. He mentioned the accusations and convictions had been politically motivated.
Navalny had an additional 19 years in a most safety penal colony added to his jail time period in 2023 in a prison case that he mentioned was designed to cow the Russian individuals into political submission.
POISONING
In August 2020, Navalny fell sick on a flight from Tomsk, in Siberia, to Moscow. The pilot made an emergency touchdown, saving his life, and Navalny was flown to Berlin, the place he was handled for the consequences of a neurotoxin that German navy assessments confirmed to be Novichok, a poison developed within the Soviet Union.
Putin dismissed a joint media investigation that mentioned it had recognized a staff of assassins from Russia’s FSB safety service. “If somebody had needed to poison him, they’d have completed him off,” he mentioned.
FAMILY
Navalny’s spouse is Yulia. Their daughter is known as Darya, and their son is known as Zakhar.
KEY NAVALNY QUOTES:
ON THE UKRAINE WAR:
“This can be a silly struggle which your Putin began,” Navalny instructed an enchantment court docket in Moscow by way of video hyperlink from a corrective penal colony in 2022. “This struggle was constructed on lies.”
“One madman has obtained his claws into Ukraine and I have no idea what he needs to do with it – this loopy thief.”
ON PUTIN:
“Corruption is the inspiration of up to date Russia, it’s the basis of Mr Putin’s political energy,” Navalny instructed Reuters in an interview in 2011.
ON RUSSIA:
“As soon as the good Russian author Leo Tolstoy described the construction of energy in Russia: ‘the villains who robbed their very own individuals obtained collectively, recruited troopers and judges to protect their orgy, and now they’re having a feast’. This sensible phrase exactly describes what’s happing in our nation.”
In 2023, he admonished the Russian elite for its venality, expressing hatred for many who he mentioned squandered a historic alternative to reform after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
He dissected Russia’s post-Soviet historical past, together with the legacies of probably the most highly effective figures of the Nineties who grew to become often known as the reformers who sought to put the foundations of capitalism and the oligarchs who received fabulous fortunes.
“I can’t cease myself from fiercely, wildly hating those that bought, pissed away, and squandered the historic probability that our nation had within the early nineties,” Navalny mentioned.
ON FEAR AND AMBITION:
“Why ought to I be afraid?” he mentioned in 2011 when requested concerning the risks of difficult the Kremlin.
When requested by Reuters about his ambition, he winced however mentioned: “I wish to be president, however there are not any elections in Russia.”
ON DEATH:
“In the event that they determine to kill me then it means we’re extremely robust and we have to use that energy and never hand over,” he as soon as instructed CNN. “We do not realise how robust we truly are.”