Navalny appears at a court hearing the day before his death/Reuters
When Russia allowed Alexei Navalny to go to Germany for medical treatment after being exposed to nerve gas in the summer of 2020, he received his life as a gift.
He rehabilitated and recovered, and could have chosen whether to remain living in exile, although under constant fear but as a free man, or risk and return to his homeland to continue the fight against President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny refused to bow to the leader he sought to overthrow, and thus, upon his return to Moscow in early 2021, he sealed his fate.
He has not seen the light of day since, and died yesterday under mysterious circumstances in a modern Gulag in the freezing Arctic Circle.
The prison authorities claimed that he "didn't feel well, collapsed and died almost immediately", but only a day earlier he appeared in a video hearing in court joking and joking as usual.
His mother, who only saw him on Monday, said he was "alive, healthy and happy".
Whatever his official cause of death, assuming we ever know it, Navalny's unjustified imprisonment is what led to his murder, even if indirectly.
The 47-year-old Navalny believed he would see in his lifetime the fall of Putin and the rebirth of his country, but once again it was Russia's leader of the last quarter of a century who fell to his rivals.
He chose to return to Russia despite the fear for his life.
Navalny/Reuters
Now, a month before the presidential elections, the results of which are known in advance, there is no one left to embarrass Putin as Navalny knew how to do.
Although the President of Russia never mentioned him by name, the lawyer who fought corruption produced many films in recent years that exposed his life of wealth and hedonism and that of the Russian elite at the expense of the public.
Putin is not a person who forgives such personal insults.
The war in Ukraine reduced the remnants of free speech left in Putinist Russia, and Navalny's movement was outlawed after it was designated as "extremist" when its members were jailed or fled the country.
Moscow claimed Navalny was a puppet of the West, used to bring about a revolution in Russia, but this is a label it applies to any regime opponent.
Navalny did not hide that he was willing to pay with his life to overthrow Putin, whom he began to fight back in the days of the huge protests after the 2011 presidential elections.
He has been arrested repeatedly since then, and has been prosecuted for a wide range of offences.
Initially, these were white-collar offenses, which prevented him from running in the elections, and in recent years he has already been accused of security offenses that landed him more than 30 years in prison.
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The most significant punishment for Putin will be continued aid to Ukraine.
A memorial rally for Nabalani outside the consulate in New York/Reuters
Although he maintained optimism and hope throughout, many believed that it was only a matter of time before Navalny joined a long line of Russian opposition leaders that the Kremlin got rid of.
He is the second opponent of Putin to die in less than a year.
He was preceded by the leader of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose plane crashed in August, two months after the rebellion he led against the Russian army due to the failures in the war in Ukraine.
Without them, Putin has bought himself a sort of industrial peace, even if only in appearance.
Dictators of his type see enemies everywhere - and sometimes they are also right - especially in the midst of a difficult war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
The most significant shot of encouragement for the President of Russia these days does not come from within his own country, but from what is supposed to be the greatest enemy.
The United States is entering an election year, and parts of the Republican Party that support Putin - led by the former president and their expected candidate in November Donald Trump - are criticizing continued aid to Ukraine, whose forces are having difficulty repelling Russian forces due to the depletion of their ammunition stocks.
Yulia Navalny, Navalny's wife, promised that Putin would be punished for her husband's death.
The most significant punishment that the Russian president can receive from the West is not more sanctions of this and that, but uncompromising support for Kiev.
But in the current climate in America, it is highly doubtful that Navalny's death will change the camp that sees Putin as a role model.
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Alexei Navalny
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