On February 16 of this year, the world was hit with shocking news. Alexei Navalny was dead. Or rather, had finally been killed to ensure his silence. Navalny was the most well known opposition leader in Russia and openly challenged president Putin—who refused to speak Navalny’s name—time and time again. According to the FSIN’s (Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service), his (alleged) cause of death was a detached blood clot. In a statement made by the FSIN, Navalny “felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness”. They claim that they made resuscitation attempts, but could not save his life. However, it still remains unclear whether that was his actual cause of death, as several attempts had been made on his life before.
At the time of his death, Navalny was in the Arctic penal colony known as IK-3, serving a three-decade sentence. This penal colony is one of Russia’s harshest, where he was moved after already having served some time in another prison. Navalny was sentenced to prison on extremism-related charges—including financing and inciting extremist activities through his Anti-Corruption Foundation as well as for “rehabilitating Nazi ideology”. Navalny denied all the charges against him, which were a part of the fifth criminal conviction against him in recent years. The convictions against him were in reality a political attempt to silence him. Yet, these efforts never fully succeeded, as Navalny continued his work and opposition from prison through his associates and lawyers.
Today, Russia remains an authoritarian state in the hands of Putin, reminiscent of the state under the USSR. Against the continuing backdrop of its ongoing war in Ukraine, human rights within the country are in decline . Most notoriously, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and association are severely restricted and critics of the government face arbitrary prosecution, lengthy prison terms, violent attacks committed with impunity, and other reprisals. This was perhaps seen most clearly in the case of Navalny. Being Putin’s harshest critic, Navalny’s trial was held behind closed doors and under highly unusual circumstances, including the limitation of his lawyers’ access to alleged evidence. Countries around the world reacted strongly to this, including the U.S., where Matthew Miller—the State Department spokesperson—called his sentencing an “unjust conclusion to an unjust trial”, saying it illustrated the Russian “lack of due process afforded to those who dare criticize the regime”. Navalny himself said he expected the ruling to be “Stalinist”.
Even before his death, there were numerous attempts made on Navalny’s life that he and others attributed to the Russian government. Most notorious was when he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020. He barely survived. In Daniel Roher’s 2022 documentary, Navalny investigated his own poisoning. He and his team managed to figure out the identities of the FSB (Federal Security Service) agents that attempted to poison him, then called them one by one to ask why they did it. In one of the phone calls, he pretends to be an investigator from the Kremlin demanding to know why the mission failed. The man on the other end of the phone spilled the details on the dosage, the placement of the poison in Navalny’s underpants, and blamed the assassination attempt’s failure on the quick response of emergency services. In the documentary, at the end of this phone call, Navanly said “poor guy, they will kill him”. Despite knowing that the Kremlin had attempted to take his life, Navalny chose to return to his beloved Russia after recovering from the poisoning in Berlin. This turned out to be a fatal decision.
Navalny has left behind a legacy. At the time of his death, his wife—Yulia Navalnaya—was at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where she called upon the world to unite against Putin and his regime. In a video she released shortly after, Navalny’s widow made it clear that she would continue his work. Even his anti-corruption organization, the FBK, continues its work with Navalnaya as its new face. Another close political associate of Navalny, Leonid Volkov, said that around 15-18 million users per month engage with the FBK’s content, and that “these people will be the main agents of change in the event of Vladimir Putin’s death or some other sudden power vacuum”. Most of the people who still work for Navalny’s cause are outside of Russia, but that does not guarantee their safety. Volkov was attacked outside his home in Lithuania just hours after having had the conversation with journalists from Meduza (the journalistic source cited above).
The danger towards these individuals’ lives is not their only obstacle. Russia’s censoring of media and digital platforms also endangers their ability to communicate with supporters of the movement and the Russian public. The FBK’s main platform for publishing its investigations is Youtube, and there is a risk that the Russian government will completely block access to Youtube.
After his death, Navalny was celebrated in demonstrations across Russia, many of which were violently suppressed. Navalny’s death marked the beginning of his martyrdom, as he was a beacon of hope for many in Russia. Contrary to silencing Navalny’s message by (likely) having him killed, Putin amplified it. At his funeral in Moscow on the 1st of March, thousands of people gathered despite the threat of (arbitrary) detention and chanted “Putin is a killer”. Despite everything he was put through, Navalny always remained optimistic that a younger generation of Russians would reclaim what he called “the beautiful Russia of our future”. He never lost hope that Russia would become free again from the grips of a repressive government, and his work was not in vain.
By Roya Juhlin-Dannfelt
October 15, 2024
