Alexei Navalny, the most formidable political opponent that Russian president Vladimir Putin has ever faced, died in an Arctic penal colony, aged 47. Navalny was a Russian lawyer who attacked Putin’s oligarchic system, accusing it of deep corruption. Putin would never utter his name in public.
US President Joe Biden responded to the news of Navalny’s death, blaming it on Putin and “his thugs.”
The Russian authorities warned people not to take part in any mass meetings to mourn Navalny’s death. Putin, informed of the death, said nothing.
Navalny thought he might be Russia’s Mandela, forced to serve long prison sentences at the hands of the Putin regime for daring to challenge it, but to emerge at the end victorious in overthrowing the sclerotic reign of the former KGB agent—now longer than that of Joseph Stalin.
Cruel facts proved this dream unfounded.
Navalny was targeted in a Russian nerve agent attack which nearly cost him his life. But after recovering in a German hospital, he made the decision to return to Moscow in January 2021. Arrest and harsh imprisonment followed. Russian authorities denounced him as a CIA spy. He survived a hunger strike in one penal colony. So the Russian authorities transferred him to a remote camp above the Arctic Circle. There he died, allegedly on a walk in the prison grounds, one day after clowning with his guards and the prison authorities. Whether directly or indirectly, the Russians murdered Navalny.
Navalny leaves a vision of hope behind, captured in a brilliant documentary by Canadian film-maker, Daniel Roher, released in 2022.
Brilliant because it lets Navalny be himself, let’s him shine as a charismatic person, a tall and lanky, blue-eyed, funny guy, a family man, but also an individual with a towering belief in himself and his mission to free Russia of its czar and its deeply entrenched autocracy.
Brilliant because it shows the effort made by the open-source intelligence organization, Bellingcat, in association with Navalny’s team, to track down his poisoners, which they do with remarkable facility. The deep internet hunt conducted by Bellingcat culminates in a prank call made by Navalny on December 14, 2020, posing as some aide to a security apparatchnik, to one of the chemical weapons specialists behind the use of the novichuk nerve agent against him. The prank call, to everyone’s surprise, elicits a near-complete story of the attack, right down to the details of the nerve agent being spread on the crotch and seams of Navalny’s underpants during his visit to Tomsk, in Siberia. The chemist blames the emergency diversion of the flight that was to bring Navalny back to Moscow, because of his medical distress, for the fact that the poisoning failed. If only the plane had stayed in the air longer, made it to its Moscow destination, the chemist relates, the novichok would have succeeded in killing Navalny.
Brilliant finally because the documentary ends with Navalny answering a question put to him by Daniel Roher, which he initially waved off. What if he is killed on his return to Russia?
His message in English, and not meant for just a Russian audience, is—"don’t give up.” A longer, passionate version, is delivered in Russian, the punch line of which is that ‘if they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibly strong.’
And then Navalny turns to an unlikely source—a quote commonly attributed to the British philosopher Edmund Burke:
“the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”
R.I.P. Alexei Navalny.
* (If you have not yet seen it, you can “Navalny” on Crave)
Re Larry Hannant's comment, the film does address Navalny's participation in far right rallies in Russia.
Thanks Wesley. Definitely going to watch the doc on Crave. To attract the repression he did and show such forbearance in the face of it, he demonstrated heroism of the highest order. I hope his life and death are an inspiration for the next generation of Russian leaders. By the way, looks like you've attracted some trolls. Their lurking on this thread is a tribute to the power of a fallen hero.