Critic of the Kremlin and corruption in Russia, opposition member Alexei Navalny died in prison this Friday, February 16. Career of an activist involved in an unequal struggle with Russian power, accused and sentenced to 19 years in prison in rulings that his defenders describe as political persecution.
The Kremlin's number one enemy, Alexei Navalny, 47, died on Friday, February 16, the Russian prison administration announced. His death comes a month before the upcoming Russian presidential elections in which Vladimir Putin has declared himself a candidate.
A look back at the eventful life of Alexei Navalny, who established himself as one of the few opposition figures who directly challenged the Russian power embodied by Putin.
An anti-corruption activist
The notoriety of this lawyer by training, married, father of two children and practicing Orthodox, has not stopped growing in recent years, more in the West than in his own country, through his arrests and imprisonment.
It all started with the launch, in 2007, of his anti-corruption crusade through the social network LiveJournal and, starting in 2009, on his personal blog Rospil.info, totally unknown in Russia, Alexei Navalny dedicated his energies to denouncing the scope of the corruption that plagues the country.
In 2010, he accused Transneft, a giant of the Russian energy industry, of having embezzled $4 billion (€3.3 billion) during the construction of a gigantic oil pipeline linking Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. His methods and revelations earned him the nickname 'Russian Julian Assange' by the Western media, in reference to the founder of WikiLeaks.
In 2011, he founded an organization, the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK), to track embezzlement in public companies and corruption in large Russian groups. The well-documented investigations of Alexei Navalny and his teams have generated millions of views on YouTube and are disturbing even beyond the political sphere.
The opponent aroused numerous enmities by not hesitating to attack the flagships of the Russian economy, whether it was the giant Gazprom, which has the monopoly on the exploitation of natural gas in Russia, but also Rosneft, the country's main oil company, or the VTP bank.
After having been subject to several administrative obstacles, an investigation for “money laundering” and having its accounts frozen, the FBK was classified, in October 2019, as a “foreign agent” by the Ministry of Justice.
Not eligible until 2028
At the same time, with the legitimacy gained due to his fight against corruption, Alexei Navalny became increasingly involved in the political arena, where the opposition was marginalized and ignored by the media controlled by those in power.
After the 2011 legislative elections, won by Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, he began a new fight with what he called “the party of thieves and criminals”, denouncing electoral fraud observed during the vote.
Alexei Navalny's charisma and oratory skills propelled him into the ranks of protest leaders in the winter of 2011-2012, in which the opposition mobilized hundreds of thousands of protesters against the Government.
His omnipresence on social media and his activism gave him greater visibility, but also cost him numerous judicial subpoenas and smear campaigns that even accused him of being a CIA agent.
In 2012, he was sentenced to 15 days in prison after clashes with the police during a demonstration, before being placed under house arrest for almost a year, between February 2014 and February 2015, within the framework of a procedure that also persecutes his brother, Oleg. Navalny.
![Police detain Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a rally in support of journalist Ivan Golunov, who was detained by police on drug charges and later released from house arrest, in Moscow, Russia, on June 12, 2019. .](https://s.france24.com/media/display/10fd2ed2-8df0-11e9-8c0a-005056bff430/rusia_3_0.jpg)
The two men are jointly accused of having embezzled 27 million rubles (394,000 euros) to the detriment of the French cosmetics manufacturer Yves Rocher. He will be sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
For his part, Alexei Navalny, who strongly rejected all accusations of embezzlement, multiplied the provocations by violating his house arrest, attending a demonstration under the Kremlin walls in December 2014 and then cutting off his electronic bracelet in early January 2014. 2015.
Annoyance power
The opponent did not give up and managed to run for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and officially received 27% of the vote. A result that he estimated was much lower than his actual score and that led him to request, in vain, a recount.
This was the last time that Alexei Navalny was authorized to participate in an election on Russian territory. His candidacy for the 2018 presidential election was rejected by the Central Election Commission, due to a five-year suspended prison sentence for embezzlement in a case dating back to 2009. The Commission even warned that the opponent would not be able to run. elections before 2028. Alexei Navalny accuses the Kremlin of torpedoing his candidacy to suffocate the opposition.
But even when he was declared ineligible, the activist, once close to ultranationalist circles, called on the opposition to remain mobilized, increased calls for demonstrations and maintained 'nuisance power'.
In September 2019, while some 60 opposition candidates, some of whom were his allies, were excluded from the elections that were to renew the Moscow Parliament, Alexei Navalny asked his followers to vote in a useful way. Precisely in favor of the candidate best placed compared to the one in power. A profitable strategy that caused the United Russia party to lose 19 of the 45 seats in the capital.
![Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny waves as he leaves a detention center on August 23, 2019, after he was jailed for 30 days for calling for an unauthorized protest in Moscow, Russia.](https://s.france24.com/media/display/aa1394c8-c5ac-11e9-8d8d-005056a98db9/a_rusia_1_edit.jpg)
But while preparing an active campaign ahead of the Russian legislative elections scheduled for September, on August 20, 2020, Alexei Navalny was admitted to intensive care in serious condition in a hospital in Siberia after feeling unwell on board a plane. This was the beginning of the alleged poisoning ordered according to the opponent by Vladimir Putin.
Far from going into exile, Alexei Navalny boldly returned to Russia on January 17, 2021, knowing that he would be arrested there. As soon as he arrived at the airport, he was arrested in front of cameras from around the world.
Two days later, the opponent attacked again. In a video viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube, he accused Vladimir Putin of owning a sumptuous palace on the Black Sea.
The shock wave was such that the Russian president was forced to personally deny it. Despite his success and the issue of his poisoning, popular mobilization in Russia has remained timid and the demonstrations were quickly repressed.
The authorities were determined to subdue the opponent who, for his part, said he was determined to never give in. “I will not be silent and I hope that everyone who listens to me will not be silent,” he proclaimed in court in September 2022, after 12 days of isolation for having condemned the invasion of Ukraine.
Disappeared from the radar for several weeks, Alexei Navalny broke the news at the end of December 2023 on social networks, ensuring that he was “fine” after his transfer to a prison colony in the Russian Arctic.
On February 1, 2024, he called for demonstrations during the presidential elections scheduled for March 15-17. “I like the idea that those who vote against Putin go to the polls at the same time, at noon. At noon against Putin.” A final statement that will serve as a political legacy for his followers.
*This article, first published in January 2021, was updated on February 16, 2024, following the announcement of the death of Alexéi Nalvany.
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