By Isabella Isasi By: Isabella Isasi
Photo Credit: Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
On February 16th, leader of the political party “Russia of the Future” and lawyer Alexei Navalny died while serving a nineteen-year prison sentence at an Arctic penal colony. His death certificate states he died of natural causes, and the Russian government denies any involvement.
Less than two weeks after Alexei Navalny’s death, the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola honored him by stating that “Alexei Navalny dedicated his life to the fight against corruption and for a democratic Russia.” Alexei Navalny’s actions made him a prominent foe to leader Vladimir Putin. The late politician first gained widespread recognition in 2009, when he publicized evidence of embezzlement of funds for major Russian corporations, such as Gazprom a global energy company based in Russia and one of the largest natural gas producers and exporters in the world. Navalny took minority shareholdings in such companies to gain more information on their illicit business operations. Once done, he used court appeals to investigate suspicious transactions, finding evidence of embezzlement. A 2018 study carried out by Russian economists Ruben Enikopolov, Maria Petrova, and Konstantin Sonin found that Navalny’s blog posts on corruption in Russia had a negative impact on share prices of the exposed companies.
By 2010, Alexei Navalny was consistently posting on his blog, social media sites such as Twitter and YouTube, and also organized mass street demonstrations, becoming known as an outspoken critic of Putin. One of his most notable contributions to the exposure of corruption in Russia was creating his website and organization, Rospil. It aimed to share information he and his team uncovered regarding corruption within large state corporations. Along with Rospil, Navalny created the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a non-profit organization that states they aim to publish investigations of alleged corruption by high-ranking Russian officials. After many years of activism, anti-government demonstrations, and an active use of social media, Navalny announced a bid for the Russian presidency in 2018. However, the Russian courts barred him from running for president.
Between 2011 and 2022, Navalny was arrested over ten times, often with charges that the U.S. Embassy in Georgia deems “politically motivated” by the Russian government. Another incident against Navalny, although denied by Putin, may include a poisoning attempt that occurred in 2020. On a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny fell extremely ill and was transported to a hospital in Berlin. German laboratory technicians found that he was poisoned with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the former Soviet Union. Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, to which Putin replied, “If the [security services] wanted to poison him, they would have, most likely, carried it through.” Once he returned to Russia, Navalny was arrested on parole violations and was sentenced to another two and a half years in prison. In March 2022, Navalny was charged with fraud and contempt and ultimately sentenced to nine years in a maximum security prison. Navalny went missing for three weeks near the time of his death and reemerged in an Arctic penal colony known as the “Polar Wolf”. It is widely regarded as one of the toughest prisons in Russia, given its violations of labor protection, fire safety, and sanitary regulations, as stated by an unnamed lawyer dedicated to court cases involving Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) institutions.
With a fierce critic of Putin gone, where does this leave Russia’s opposition coalition? Freedom House’s 2024 report on Russia ranks the country as 13 out of 100 in terms of freedom, comparable to countries such as Venezuela and China. In spite of the possible danger, prominent figures such as Yulia Navalnaya have vowed to continue her late husband’s work. Exiled Russian opposition leaders, such as former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Khodorkovsky are attempting to build a coalition with anti-war groups worldwide. Khodorovsky mentions the planned coalition in his book “Slay a Dragon: Building a New Russia After Putin”, which he describes as a “a multi-party, multi-faced protest “a collection of discordant political groups.” Other opposition leaders taking part in the coalition include chess legend Garry Kasparov and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Although many analysts and observers, including journalists from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, are marking Navalny’s death as the end of political dissent in Russia, movements for political change are often larger than a single individual. It appears as if the future of Russia’s opposition coalition hinges on the resilience of its people, despite the fear of potential retribution.