HE WAS A WHITE RUSSIAN NATIONALIST
As world leaders pay tribute to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, some have drawn attention to some inconvenient aspects of his past.
James Hockaday
Sun, 18 February 2024
Alexei Navalny is widely regarded among Western leaders to have been murdered by the Russian state. (Reuters)
Tributes have been paid across Europe and the US to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the latest critic of Vladimir Putin to die under mysterious circumstances.
Navalny, who died on Friday after falling unconscious in an Arctic penal colony, was hailed as one of the Russian president’s most formidable foes – a thorn in Putin's side who refused to cower to him. However, as Western politicians pay their respects, some more uncomfortable aspects of Navalny's career have been brought back to the surface.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was criticised for praising the 'courage' of Navalny by Mish Rahman, who sits on the party's NEC ruling body, referring to the opposition leader's "far-right" past.
"Navalny took part in the Russian March, an annual demonstration that draws ultranationalists, including some who adopt swastika-like symbols," Rahman tweeted. "He has never apologised for his earliest xenophobic videos or his decision to attend the Russian March.
"Putin is an evil tyrant and nobody should be imprisoned for political opposition, let alone die this way. But that doesn’t mean that the leader of the Labour Party should be lauding a man with links to the far-right who refers to Muslims as 'cockroaches'."
Rahman appeared to be referring to a notorious video from 2007 in which Navalny appears to compare Muslim immigrants in Russia to "cockroaches" as he advocated for gun ownership.
In another video, he is dressed as a dentist and appears to compare migrants in Moscow to tooth cavities, Radio Free Europe reports. He says: "I recommend full sanitisation. Everything in our way should be carefully but decisively be removed through deportation."
Shortly before releasing both clips, which are still on his YouTube channel, Navalny was expelled by the liberal Yabloko party over his "nationalist activities", having participated in the Russian March, an annual rally associated with ultra-nationalist far-right groups chanting slogans such as "Russia for ethnic Russians".
"Anybody who expects Navalny to be an ideal Western liberal Democrat has been mistaken," Jade McGlynn, a researcher on Russian politics, told Euronews.
After leaving Yabloko, Navalny went on to co-found the National Russian Liberation Movement ( NAROD, which vowed to "fight against the ruling regime and kleptocracy" but was also viewed as far-right and anti-immigration.
In August 2008 Navalny referred to Georgians as "rodents" during Russia's attack on the country, in comments for which he later apologised.
Did Navalny's views change over time?
Navalny never apologised for the controversial videos from 2007.
Leonid Volkov, who served as the head of Navalny's network of regional political offices in Russia, told the New Yorker in 2021 that he regrets the videos but decided not to delete them "because it's a historical fact".
He told the magazine that Navalny always saw the Russian March as a legitimate form of political expression among Russians who want a free and democratic society. He added: “He believes that if you don’t talk to the kind of people who attend these marches, they will all become skinheads. But, if you talk to them, you may be able to convince them that their real enemy is Putin.”
Since the mid-2000s, Navalny appeared to have softened his stance on immigration, advocating for a visa scheme for Central Asian migrants and to protect their rights as labourers. He has also adopted more left-leaning economic positions and came out in support of gay marriage.
In interviews Navalny has said his ability to engage with both nationalists and liberals was a strength of his as a politician, according to Radio Free Europe. However, some remained sceptical that he had truly left his far-right populist life behind him, particularly due to his refusal to apologise for many of his older statements.
While Navalny clearly leaves behind a complex legacy, many people still valued him for being such a strong voice against Vladimir Putin. (AP)
A row at Amnesty International
In 2021, Amnesty International apologised to Navalny for stripping him of his status as a "prisoner of conscience”.
The human rights group said in February of that year that it would stop using the term, after deciding his remarks in the 2000s amounted to "hate speech".
At the time, Julie Verhaar, Amnesty International’s acting secretary general, said speculation over the use of the term "prisoner of conscience" was "detracting attention from our core demand that Aleksei Navalny be freed immediately".
"This distraction only serves the Russian authorities, who have jailed Navalny on politically motivated charges, simply because he dared to criticise them," she added. “The term ‘prisoner of conscience’ is a specific description based on a range of internal criteria established by Amnesty. There should be no confusion: nothing Navalny has said in the past justifies his current detention, which is purely politically motivated."
Then, in May 2021, Amnesty International said “following careful evaluation", it had decided to restore Navalny's status, arguing that the Russian government had used its earlier decision to further violate Navalny's rights.
It said it apologised for the "negative impacts this has had on Alexei Navalny personally, and the activists in Russia and around the world who tirelessly campaign for his freedom."
However, the saga didn't end there, with a Muslim former Amnesty employee, who claims she was sacked for challenging the U-turn, going on to sue the organisation. In July 2023, Aisha Jung said she was lodging an appeal after all of her claims were dismissed by the Central London Employment Tribunal.
They’re Lying about Alexei Navalny “Putin’s Enemy”
Was Alexei Navalny really Putin’s main opponent? Was he poisoned by the Russian government who then killed him in prison? Was he even popular in Russia? Well, no to all of those things and we show you what the West will not tell you while they mourn their favorite media darling.
Navalny’s body found bruised in Arctic morgue
James Kilner
Sun, 18 February 2024
Russian prison officials say Alexei Navalny died on Friday after falling ill during a short walk at IK-3 prison in the Russian Arctic - Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
The bruised body of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, has been found in a hospital morgue in the Arctic, two days after he died in a nearby prison.
A paramedic told Russian opposition media that there were bruises on Navalny’s head and chest when his body was brought into the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital.
“Such injuries, described by those that saw them, appear from seizures,” the unnamed paramedic told the exiled Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
“The person convulses, they try to restrain him, and bruises appear. They also said that he also had a bruise on his chest. That is, they still tried to resuscitate him, and he died, most likely, from cardiac arrest.”
Russian prison officials said that Navalny died on Friday after falling ill during a short walk at IK-3, a notoriously brutal prison in the Russian Arctic.
Navalny’s mother failed to find his body at the morgue in Salekhard on Saturday and his colleagues at the Anti-Corruption Foundation accused the Russian authorities of a cover-up.
Western leaders have accused Putin of murdering Navalny - Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Reporters said no autopsy had yet been performed. They also said that two unscheduled flights from Moscow had landed on Saturday at Salekhard, possibly with autopsy specialists.
“The first jet landed at about six in the evening. It was met by cars of the Investigative Committee. And the second one arrived an hour and a half later,” Novaya Gazeta quoted an unnamed source as saying.
Russia observers said that state autopsy specialists may have been flown in from Moscow so that they can deliver a death certificate that pleases the Kremlin.
They also said that it was unusual to send the body of a dead prisoner from IK-3 to the hospital morgue, as Navalny’s had been, rather than the municipal one.
Navalny was Vladimir Putin’s most serious opponent. Western leaders have accused the Kremlin of murdering him. He was facing three decades in prison on various charges and had been transferred to IK-3 shortly before Christmas.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said on Sunday that Putin should face war crimes charges for the death of Navalny.
“I’d like to see Putin in front of that special tribunal, held to account for all of his crimes, not just in Ukraine, but as we are seeing just in the last 48 hours in Russia as well,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme on Sunday.
The sudden death of Navalny shocked liberal-minded Russians and triggered rare protests in Russia where demonstrations against the Kremlin are banned.
OVD-Info, a Russian activist group that monitors the Russian police, said that 400 people had been detained across Russia, mainly for laying flowers for Navalny at memorials to Soviet repression.
Reports from across Russia said that the plain-clothes security services, often wearing surgical masks, were following people who had laid flowers. Different police forces appeared to respond differently, with some blocking access to memorial sites and others tearing them down.
These were the biggest nationwide protests in Russia against the authorities since September 2022, when Putin ordered a mobilisation to recruit soldiers for his war in Ukraine.
Analysts said that the timing of Navalny’s death is important for the Kremlin which wants to use a presidential election next month to showcase support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
Ben Noble and Nikolai Petrov, both Fellows on the Russia Programme at Chatham House, said that the death of Navalny had undermined Russia’s beleaguered, fragmented and exiled opposition.
“There is no obvious figure to take up the role that Navalny crafted for himself, of Vladimir Putin’s main opponent. There will be no Navalny 2.0 in the short-term, at least,” they said.
On Sunday Navalny’s wife, Yulia, posted a new picture of the two of them together on social media, writing “I love you”.
The post on Instagram showed a picture of the two together, their heads touching as they watched a performance of some kind.
Yulia Navalny posted this picture of the couple on Instagram
Navalny’s death has had deep reverberations.
Donald Trump, who has been accused of withholding funding and weapons from Ukraine via Congress, came under fire on Sunday for his continued silence over Navalny’s death.
“The fact that he won’t acknowledge anything with Navalny – either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents, or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Nikki Haley, his only Republican rival for the presidential nomination, said on ABC’s “This Week”.
“Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem,” added the Republican candidate, who is trailing far behind Mr Trump in the race for their party’s nomination.
Navalny’s still-unexplained death at 47 in a prison in Russia’s Arctic has drawn powerful condemnations from leaders around the world, starting with Joe Biden, the US president, who has squarely blamed Putin.
But Mr Trump, Mr Biden’s likely opponent in November, has yet to say a word about it at any of several public appearances since Navalny’s death was reported on Friday.
The Trump campaign, asked for comment, has directed reporters to a post on Mr Trump’s Truth Social platform that says: “America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the world is thinking.”
The post does not mention Navalny, Russia or Putin.
The lack of comment comes days after Mr Trump stunned Western allies by saying he would “encourage” Russia to attack members of the Nato military alliance who had not met their financial obligations.
The suggestion cast a pall over a major global security conference in Munich, drawing a warning from Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of Nato, that Mr Trump should not “undermine” the alliance’s security.
James Kilner
Sun, 18 February 2024
Russian prison officials say Alexei Navalny died on Friday after falling ill during a short walk at IK-3 prison in the Russian Arctic - Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
The bruised body of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, has been found in a hospital morgue in the Arctic, two days after he died in a nearby prison.
A paramedic told Russian opposition media that there were bruises on Navalny’s head and chest when his body was brought into the Salekhard District Clinical Hospital.
“Such injuries, described by those that saw them, appear from seizures,” the unnamed paramedic told the exiled Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
“The person convulses, they try to restrain him, and bruises appear. They also said that he also had a bruise on his chest. That is, they still tried to resuscitate him, and he died, most likely, from cardiac arrest.”
Russian prison officials said that Navalny died on Friday after falling ill during a short walk at IK-3, a notoriously brutal prison in the Russian Arctic.
Navalny’s mother failed to find his body at the morgue in Salekhard on Saturday and his colleagues at the Anti-Corruption Foundation accused the Russian authorities of a cover-up.
Western leaders have accused Putin of murdering Navalny - Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Reporters said no autopsy had yet been performed. They also said that two unscheduled flights from Moscow had landed on Saturday at Salekhard, possibly with autopsy specialists.
“The first jet landed at about six in the evening. It was met by cars of the Investigative Committee. And the second one arrived an hour and a half later,” Novaya Gazeta quoted an unnamed source as saying.
Russia observers said that state autopsy specialists may have been flown in from Moscow so that they can deliver a death certificate that pleases the Kremlin.
They also said that it was unusual to send the body of a dead prisoner from IK-3 to the hospital morgue, as Navalny’s had been, rather than the municipal one.
Navalny was Vladimir Putin’s most serious opponent. Western leaders have accused the Kremlin of murdering him. He was facing three decades in prison on various charges and had been transferred to IK-3 shortly before Christmas.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said on Sunday that Putin should face war crimes charges for the death of Navalny.
“I’d like to see Putin in front of that special tribunal, held to account for all of his crimes, not just in Ukraine, but as we are seeing just in the last 48 hours in Russia as well,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme on Sunday.
The sudden death of Navalny shocked liberal-minded Russians and triggered rare protests in Russia where demonstrations against the Kremlin are banned.
OVD-Info, a Russian activist group that monitors the Russian police, said that 400 people had been detained across Russia, mainly for laying flowers for Navalny at memorials to Soviet repression.
Reports from across Russia said that the plain-clothes security services, often wearing surgical masks, were following people who had laid flowers. Different police forces appeared to respond differently, with some blocking access to memorial sites and others tearing them down.
These were the biggest nationwide protests in Russia against the authorities since September 2022, when Putin ordered a mobilisation to recruit soldiers for his war in Ukraine.
Analysts said that the timing of Navalny’s death is important for the Kremlin which wants to use a presidential election next month to showcase support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
Ben Noble and Nikolai Petrov, both Fellows on the Russia Programme at Chatham House, said that the death of Navalny had undermined Russia’s beleaguered, fragmented and exiled opposition.
“There is no obvious figure to take up the role that Navalny crafted for himself, of Vladimir Putin’s main opponent. There will be no Navalny 2.0 in the short-term, at least,” they said.
On Sunday Navalny’s wife, Yulia, posted a new picture of the two of them together on social media, writing “I love you”.
The post on Instagram showed a picture of the two together, their heads touching as they watched a performance of some kind.
Yulia Navalny posted this picture of the couple on Instagram
Navalny’s death has had deep reverberations.
Donald Trump, who has been accused of withholding funding and weapons from Ukraine via Congress, came under fire on Sunday for his continued silence over Navalny’s death.
“The fact that he won’t acknowledge anything with Navalny – either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents, or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Nikki Haley, his only Republican rival for the presidential nomination, said on ABC’s “This Week”.
“Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem,” added the Republican candidate, who is trailing far behind Mr Trump in the race for their party’s nomination.
Navalny’s still-unexplained death at 47 in a prison in Russia’s Arctic has drawn powerful condemnations from leaders around the world, starting with Joe Biden, the US president, who has squarely blamed Putin.
But Mr Trump, Mr Biden’s likely opponent in November, has yet to say a word about it at any of several public appearances since Navalny’s death was reported on Friday.
The Trump campaign, asked for comment, has directed reporters to a post on Mr Trump’s Truth Social platform that says: “America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the world is thinking.”
The post does not mention Navalny, Russia or Putin.
The lack of comment comes days after Mr Trump stunned Western allies by saying he would “encourage” Russia to attack members of the Nato military alliance who had not met their financial obligations.
The suggestion cast a pall over a major global security conference in Munich, drawing a warning from Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of Nato, that Mr Trump should not “undermine” the alliance’s security.
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