“Don't give up,” said Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, when asked in 2021 what message he would leave if he were killed. It was Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher who portrayed the politician in his Oscar-winning documentary Navalny (2022) presented the inevitable question. It followed Navalny in the search for the perpetrators of an earlier attempt on his life: the poisoning with a Russian nerve agent in 2020, which he miraculously survived.
On Friday, the world was startled by the announcement of Navalny's death via a short, cold message on the website of the Russian prison authority FSIN. Navalny is said to have lost consciousness after a “walk” in the IK-3 penal camp in Charp on the Arctic Circle, a Gulag-like prison, where he had recently been transported to serve increasingly longer prison sentences. The ambulance staff had attempted to resuscitate the politician, but that had given “no positive result”. “The doctors of the ambulance service then diagnosed the death of the convict,” the statement said.
Navalny's spokesperson Kira Yarmysj then announced via social media that Navalny's lawyer had immediately left for the prison camp – a journey of several days – to obtain clarification about the circumstances of the death. “As soon as we have information, we will report about it,” Yarmysj wrote. But until Navalny's body is released and an independent autopsy is performed, his relatives will remain in the dark about the cause of death and his final hours. The chance that the Kremlin will be open about this seems nil.
'Putin liable'
Navalny's wife Yulia Navalnaya also made a small statement in a response from the annual Security Conference in Munich on Friday afternoon. She told journalists she did not know whether to believe the terrible news, given that Putin “always lies.” She added, visibly emotional, that she would hold the Russian president personally responsible “for all the terrible things he has done to our Russia in recent years.”
Although she wanted to be with her children Zachar (15) and Daria (23) most, she decided to do what her husband would have done: make her voice heard. She used it to call on the international community to punish Putin's “horrible regime”. Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, also reacted to the news of her son's death on Friday. “I don't want condolences,” she wrote on Facebook. “We visited our son in the camp on the 12th. He was alive and healthy and full of vitality.”
Outside Russia, there is little doubt about the name of Navalny's killer, as was evident from the reactions pouring in from around the world, especially from Western political leaders: it is President Putin who sent his arch-enemy to his death. US President Joe Biden said at the White House on Friday that Putin “is responsible for Navalny's death.” Biden was “not surprised” by his death, but “deeply outraged.” He praised the Russian opposition leader for “bravely standing up to the corruption, violence and all the bad things of Putin's government.”
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The fact that the physically weak, but mentally strong Navalny, who seemed to have taken nine lives, dies while Putin is preparing for his re-election raises suspicions that he has been given a push. In video images that emerged on Friday, Navalny appeared emaciated and weak, but still in reasonably good condition. The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta launched a petition on Friday demanding that the last CCTV footage of Navalny – he was permanently filmed – be handed over to the family.
Citizens lay flowers
It therefore seems inevitable that the already unprecedented repression in Russia will increase even further in the coming weeks, in order to nip in the bud any expression of open mourning and political discontent. Yet in Moscow and other Russian cities, courageous citizens laid flowers at monuments to victims of political repression in a silent sign of grief and defiance, and under the close watch of police. At least eighty people were arrested in seven Russian cities during the commemorations, the OVD-Info rights project reported. Outside Russia, the protest was louder, with mourners protesting in numerous cities and chanting slogans against Putin.
There is no doubt that dissatisfaction is also growing within Russia about the war in Ukraine and about terror. In recent weeks, that dissatisfaction was channeled by Boris Nadezhdin, the only independent Russian opposition politician who waged a fierce anti-Putin campaign and was told last week that he has been excluded from the elections. On Friday, Kremlin propaganda was in full swing to drown out the news of Navalny's death with denials and lies. Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin stated that “Brussels and Washington” are to blame for his death. “Their names are known: from the Secretary General of NATO and the American leadership to Scholz, Sunak and Zelensky.”
The question of what will happen to Navalny's body in the coming weeks is also a thorny issue with political overtones. Will his relatives be allowed to give him a fitting farewell and if so, where? His parents live near Moscow, but his family fled the country long ago. Moreover, Navalny's anti-corruption organization FBK has been labeled 'terrorist' and banned and Putin has avoided any reference to his arch-enemy in recent years; he even refused to pronounce his name.
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