Who was Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s fierce opponent?

Furthermore, he stated that “Putin is losing” and predicted “an enormous number of deaths (…) in the crusher of war.”

He took advantage of the unpopularity of the conflict to reactivate his political movement, banned for “extremist”with the motto “no war, no mobilization, freedom for Navalny.”

Novichok and Prison Sentence

The Kremlin’s patience with Navalny ended in August 2020. Then, according to the extra-parliamentary opposition, the authorities said enough was enough and decided to eliminate the Russian politician with the greatest pull in the West.

“Putin ordered my assassination,” Navalny said after recovering in Germany from poisoning with a toxic agent of the Novichok family.

The secret operation of the special services went completely wrong and Navalni returned to Russia in mid-January 2021 like a phoenix to challenge the Russian leader.

But the Kremlin was waiting for him. The authorities took advantage of his refusal to appear before authorities over an old criminal case to send him to prison.

In this way, Putin got rid of another enemy, as happened at the time with the richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, imprisoned in Siberia (2003), or the opposition Boris Nemtsovmurdered in front of the Kremlin in 2015.

Navalny was the opponent with the most electoral hook, but after being the victim of an assassination attempt at the hands of the Federal Security Service (FSB) He became a celebrity abroad.

Until then, that honor, poisoning with toxic agents, had been reserved almost exclusively for former FSB spies who had gone over to the enemy, such as Skripal and Litvinenko.

Social media czar

Navalny, an expert in the use of social networks, was already preparing his revenge, which came in the form of three compromising videos for the Kremlin.

With the help of Bellingcat and several Western media managed to collect data that proved, according to the politician, the involvement of the FSB in his assassination attempt.

It was not limited to that, but included a telephone conversation with one of the alleged participants in the secret operation who admitted that his accomplices had sprayed Novichok on the opponent’s underwear.

The last poisoned gift from the opponent to the Kremlin was the video titled “Putin’s Palace” about the mansion that the president’s friends would have built for him on the Black Sea and that one of his best friends, businessman Arkadi Rotenberg, later admitted that it was his property.

All of this Not only did it expose the FSB and Putin, but they were seen by more than 150 million peoplea figure that contrasts with the seven million who followed the president’s annual press conference on those same dates.

Russia without Putin

It all started in the liberal Yábloko party, from where Navalni was expelled for his nationalist ideas. But his ostracism would be short-lived, as in the 2011 parliamentary elections he managed to organize the largest anti-government protests since the fall of the USSR to the rallying cry “Russia without Putin.”

The following year he made the big leap into politics by presenting his candidacy for the elections to the Moscow City Hall, where he achieved almost a third of the votes, an unprecedented milestone for the extra-parliamentary opposition.

Putin’s animosity, who never called him by name, stems from the numerous occasions on which the opponent has brought to light the shames of Kremlin allieswhom he denounces with his accusing finger on social networks far from the reach of censorship.

Also read: Alexei Navalny: Putin’s main opponent in Russia dies in prison

For the Kremlin whip there were no taboos when it came to denouncing corruption in the public administration. Be the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Parliament or a state bankthe attorney general or the wife of the presidential spokesperson.

The opposition leader It was no longer just a nuisance, but a threat. Since then, he was sentenced to prison terms for alleged economic crimes, which disqualified him as a Kremlin candidate, and he has been physically attacked on several occasions.

Even behind bars, he manages to influence the elections with his program Smart Votewhich consists of choosing between the candidates with the best chance of unseating the Kremlin party candidate.

Shortly after calling to vote for any candidate less Putin in the presidential elections next MarchNavalny was clandestinely transferred to the Arctic prison where he died today.