Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent political opposition figure, has died in a remote Russian prison at the age of 47. Navalny had been serving out a lengthy prison sentence for charges including extremism, which were widely seen as punishment for his years of criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin has been informed of Navalny’s death and that prison medics are working to identify the cause of death. Family members and supporters say authorities repeatedly denied Navalny medical care and subjected him to long, punishing stints in solitary confinement with the apparent aim of preventing his access to the outside world.
A representative of his Anti-Corruption Foundation in Washington, D.C., expressed the belief in April that Navalny was slowly being poisoned in prison. Navalny had been serving out a 19-year prison sentence on charges including extremism, embezzlement, and fraud, widely seen as Kremlin retribution for his political activities. In the days before his disappearance in December, the opposition figure unveiled a campaign to rally Russians against Putin when he runs for a fifth term as president in elections scheduled for March. Navalny was born on June 4, 1976, in a village outside Moscow. He first rose to prominence with efforts to foment shareholder revolts at Russia’s corruption-ridden state companies.
Navalny later emerged as the breakout political star of anti-government protests in Russia, a powerful speaker who railed against flawed parliamentary elections in 2011 by memorably labeling the Kremlin’s ruling United Russia bloc “the party of crooks and thieves.” Navalny was allowed to run for mayor of Moscow in 2013 despite fighting off an embezzlement conviction widely seen as a Kremlin attempt to undercut his appeal with voters. He nonetheless placed second, nearly forcing the race to a runoff with the Kremlin’s hand-picked candidate, thanks to a spirited street campaign.
The Kremlin took fewer chances when Navalny tried to challenge Putin for the presidency in 2018. A court ruled him ineligible, but Navalny forged ahead with a shadow campaign that saw him open offices nationwide and lay out Navalny’s political vision. From the political sidelines, Navalny’s informal style is honed by an internet-fueled sense of humor. Navalny’s most popular video was a two-hour film in 2021 that took viewers inside a secret palace on the Black Sea that Navalny claimed had been built by Putin for more than $1 billion. As the audience for the film grew to over 100 million views, a Kremlin-affiliated oligarch stepped forward to say he had bought the property as an investment.
Over the years, Navalny led repeated nationwide protests against Putin and Kremlin cronyism. He and his supporters were arrested dozens of times; in 2011 alone, he was detained 15 times. But with his growing popularity, particularly among younger Russians, came growing threats to Navalny’s safety. In August 2020, Navalny collapsed on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was later medevaced while in a coma for treatment in Germany, where doctors found traces of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in his blood. Navalny tricked one of the would-be assassins into confessing he’d been instructed as part of a team from Russia’s security service to smear the poison on Navalny’s underwear.
International attention to his plight continued to grow, with a top European human rights prize in 2021, and this year a documentary about him called Navalny won an Oscar. As Russia launched its attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Navalny repeatedly castigated Putin as a madman waging a “stupid war” that he would ultimately lose. It was one of the latest reminders of Navalny’s vision for his country, at once simple and yet stubbornly out of reach in an era characterized by repression and fear. Navalny called it “the happy Russia of the future.”