The death of Alexei Navalny, murdered or crushed by the harsh treatment and inhospitable conditions of the Arctic prison colony in which he had been locked up,
ends the last dissident to Russian President Vladimir Putin
who had a certain aura, who
could overshadow him
and who He was a figure known to the average Russian.
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny
was born on June 4, 1976 in Moscow.
His parents (his father was born near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant) met as students.
The boy Alexei grew up in the last 14 years of the Soviet Union in the military town of Kalinets, outside Moscow, where his father was stationed.
He spent long periods in Ukraine,
where his father was originally from.
In 1998 he finished law studies in Moscow and in 2009
he studied at the American Yale.
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny was born on June 4, 1976 in Moscow.
Photo: AP
He gained fame
through a blog
and then a website (Rospil) where
he denounces cases of corruption
that the media hides.
In 2010 he accused the public oil giant Rosneft of illegally diverting more than $3 billion that was supposed to be used to build an oil pipeline in Siberia.
The economic newspaper 'Vodomosti' declared him
personality of the year
in 2009 .
In 2011 he said that Russia Unity, Putin's party,
is a party “of thieves and fraudsters
. ”
On December 5, 2011,
he was imprisoned
for the first time after a demonstration against alleged fraud in the elections and created the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
In 2013 he lost the Moscow Mayoral elections and from then on
the authorities' siege tightened
.
He begins to spend
time locked up under surveillance in his home
.
In 2016 he announces that he will run in the 2018 presidential election. His chances of victory are slim, according to the independent Levada Center, but the Electoral Commission
prohibits him from running
.
They continue to receive small sentences of weeks or months for acts such as calling for demonstrations.
In October 2019, the Ministry of Justice declared his Foundation
a “foreign agent.”
He gained fame through a blog and then a website (Rospil) where he denounces cases of corruption.
Photo: EFE
On August 20, 2020,
he was urgently hospitalized in the Omsk region of
Siberia after falling into a coma while flying from Tomsk to Moscow.
It is believed that he was poisoned
but authorities assure that all toxic tests were negative.
Two days later, still in a coma, he arrives on a medical plane to Germany after a direct offer from Angela Merkel to Vladimir Putin, who hopes to get him off his back.
German doctors do find traces of poisoning
with the nerve agent Novitchok.
The tests are confirmed by Swedish and French laboratories.
Navalny recovers and by being in Berlin
he does not comply with the obligation imposed by the Russian Justice not to leave Moscow.
The Kafkaesque situation has consequences.
On January 17, 2021, he flies from Berlin to Moscow and upon landing he is arrested and on February 2, sentenced to three and a half years in prison for having violated the conditions of his parole, by being in Germany and not in Berlin.
On February 17, the European Court of Human Rights (an organization of which Russia is a member)
demands his immediate release
.
Moscow turns a deaf ear.
On October 20, 2021, the European Parliament awards him its Sakharov Prize for freedom of conscience, an award held by, among others, Nelson Mandela and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
The convictions are happening.
On March 22, 2022,
he received nine years “for fraud”
and in July of last year he received 19 years
for “extremism.”
His days began to dwindle last December.
His lawyers
report his disappearance
only to appear three weeks later in
a penal colony
in the Arctic with a reputation for being the harshest Russian prison.
She is known as “the polar wolf.”
There has been hardly any news of him since then except for the tweets that his team of lawyers has been publishing.
In the last known images, from this same Thursday, Nalvany
appeared very thin but smiling.
A long list of dead
Navalny is just the latest in a long list of Putin opponents
killed in strange circumstances, to say the least
.
The first to fall,
shot
in the streets of Moscow, were deputies, such as Vladimir Golovliov and Sergei Yushenko.
There are dozens of suspicious cases, some very striking.
In 2006, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot to death
and that same year former secret agent
Alexander Litvinenko
was poisoned in London .
Alexander Litvinenko fights for his life after being poisoned in 2006.
In March 2013, the body of oligarch Boris Berezovsky was found in his home in England and all eyes fell on the Kremlin.
In February 2015, former deputy prime minister
turned opposition
Boris Nemtsov
was shot dead
.
In September 2022,
the president of the oil giant Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, died
“after falling from a window” in a Moscow hospital
.