The name of Alexeï Navalny, who announced the end of his hunger strike on Friday, has become synonymous with the fight for human rights.
Rarely has the fate of a persecuted man in his country so mobilized chancelleries and international opinion, the BBC (British radio and television) going so far as to compare him to Nelson Mandela - the former South African president was a long time ago the most famous political prisoner in the world.
In Russia, protests in his favor continued despite the crackdown.
Outside, the survival of the number one opponent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, 44, has become the stake in a standoff between Joe Biden and the master of the Kremlin, recently called a "killer." By the American president.
Read also Navalny affair: why Europe has trouble sanctioning Putin's Russia
"This pressure from Biden worked because it sparked a wake-up call in the West and pushed Putin to take gloves, by transferring Navalny to a prison hospital and allowing civilian doctors to examine him", analyzes the geopolitologist Dominique Moïsi .
The head of the Quai d'Orsay, Jean-Yves Le Drian also raised his voice, threatening Moscow with "sanctions" if the opponent died in prison.
The day before, in his chilling tone of ex-KGB officer, Putin had warned: "I hope that no one will have the idea of crossing a red line" (
Editor's note: on Navalny and the Ukraine
), under penalty of “asymmetric, rapid and hard” response.
This time, Westerners were not impressed ...
17 pounds lost
There was an emergency.
The entourage of Alexeï Navalny, who had been arrested on January 17 on his return to Russia and then imprisoned in a prison where he was punished if he got up 10 minutes before the scheduled time or did not make his bed in the square, feared for his life.
Yulia Navalnaïa, his combative wife, revealed that he lost 17 kilos and suffers from serious ailments related to his poisoning by the Russian services in 2020. In a message,
the detainee clearly indicated his intention to live, while the Kremlin tried to make believe in a will of sacrificial suicide.
Navalny as a new Mandela, really?
If they are both lawyers by training, the comparison stops there, the first having neither the aura nor the support of a whole people of the second.
When he rose to prominence in the mid-2000s, the man was a nationalist and xenophobic blogger, calling to kick immigrants out of white Russia.
Videos from this period circulate, which he assumes.
After a stay in the United States, he turns into an effective and cheeky whistleblower with his site denouncing the corruption that plagues the post-Soviet oligarchy.
"He is a man of great courage"
His recent video showing Putin's secret palace by the Black Sea (denied by the person concerned) was a hit. This whistleblower side won him the sympathy of the Western media which made him a "Russian Julian Assange". "He is a man of great courage," greets a French diplomat who has been stationed in Moscow. Germany, where he was treated after his poisoning, was ready to welcome him but he refused, aware that an opponent who leaves his country loses his voice. "
In politics, his bold move was his candidacy for mayor of Moscow in 2013. In a locked system, he finished second with an honorable score (27%) against the outgoing mayor. Prevented from running for the 2018 presidential election, he will call on his supporters to vote in the legislative elections for the candidates of a split opposition. According to a survey by the independent Levada institute cited by Le Monde diplomatique, the opponent is credited with 20% of favorable opinions, far from Putin's 64%. "Putin's retribution against him is incomprehensible," resumes this diplomat, "he has never ceased to give him visibility even though he does not represent such a great threat ..."
