Death of Alexei Navalny decimates the Russian opposition
Agence France-Presse
February 16, 2024
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny February 2, 2021. © AFP
The death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has further diminished a rapidly shrinking Russian opposition, which has seen its members assassinated, sentenced to lengthy prison terms or forced into exile as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes it clear he will not tolerate challenges to his regime.
It was widely feared that Alexei Navalny was risking his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia, even challenging him for the presidency in 2018.
Navalny narrowly survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany. He earned admiration from Russia's disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia the following year.
His death comes just a day before the official launch of campaigning ahead of a new round of presidential elections set for March 15-17.
Putin oversaw changes to the constitution in 2021 that will allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. Putin is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.
On December 8 Putin announced his candidature for re-election and is widely expected to win, given the lack of political alternatives and the Kremlin's iron grip on the state apparatus.
Those who have been brave enough to defy Putin ahead of the vote have been stymied by legal challenges.
Former legislator Yekaterina Duntsova was barred in December from challenging Putin when the Central Election Commission said it was refusing to accept her nomination, citing errors in submitted documents that included misspelled names. Duntsova said she would appeal the decision at the Supreme Court and appealed to the Yabloko (Apple) party to nominate her as a candidate after the party's founder and leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, said he would not be challenging Putin for the presidency.
Duntsova has said she wants to see a more “humane” Russia that is "peaceful, friendly and ready to cooperate with everyone on the principle of respect”.
Another anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, was also disqualified from next month's presidential election. Russia's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected legal challenges to the ruling but Nadezhdin said he would appeal and file a further claim against the electoral commission's refusal to register him as a candidate.
"I don't give up and I won't give up," he said.
An Arctic prison
Navalny was Putin's most vocal critic and the one who garnered the most international recognition, winning the EU's Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2021.
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin found a way to remove him from the running. Navalny was sentenced to 19 more years in prison in August last year on extremism charges. He was already serving a nine-year term for embezzlement and other charges that he maintained were politically motivated.
Navalny briefly disappeared in December from the IK-6 prison colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres east of Moscow, where he had spent most of his detention. His disappearance provoked widespread international alarm, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken releasing a statement on X shortly before Christmas to say he was "deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Aleksey Navalny".
After sending hundreds of requests to detention centres across Russia, Navalny’s allies managed to locate him. In a series of sardonic messages published on X shortly thereafter, Navalny said he was “fine” and “relieved” that he had arrived at his new, and much more remote, Arctic prison.
A BBC reporter said Navalny "looked to be fine" when he appeared via video link at a court hearing the day before his death.
A decimated opposition
When not waylaid by legal challenges, Putin's critics also have a habit of dying prematurely. Opposition politician and former deputy PM Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near Red Square in Moscow in 2015. At the time of his death, the 55-year-old Nemtsov was working on a report that he believed proved the Kremlin’s direct involvement in the pro-Russian separatist rebellion that had erupted in eastern Ukraine the year prior.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was an investigative reporter at top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya. Politkovskaya, 48, was shot dead in 2006 at the entrance to her Moscow apartment block. Five men were sentenced and imprisoned over her death in 2014; one of them, a former policeman, was pardoned and released in 2023 after fighting in Ukraine.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned Putin critic, died after drinking green tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 at London’s Millennium Hotel in November 2006, six years to the day after he fled Russia for Britain. In a 326-page report on his death, a UK judge said there is a "strong probability" that the killing was "probably approved" by Putin.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a march on Moscow last June after becoming an increasingly vocal critic of Putin's handing of the war in Ukraine. After hours of uncertainty the rebellion fizzled and Prigozhin reportedly agreed to go into exile in Belarus.
He died in a private plane crash two months after launching his aborted challenge. Grenade fragments were found in the bodies of victims at the crash site, according to the Kremlin.
Others have found themselves behind bars, serving lengthy prison sentences. Amid the war in Ukraine, a law criminalising “discrediting the Russian armed forces” was adopted on March 4, 2022; in the three days that followed, more than 60 cases were opened against those accused of violating the new law, “the vast majority” of them peaceful anti-war protesters, according to Human Rights Watch.
Russian political activist and former journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, was sentenced last April to 25 years in prison for publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and spreading "false" information about the Russian military, among other charges.
Kara-Murza, a member of the rapidly shrinking group of opposition figures who remain in Russia, said he was determined to be a voice against both Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel condemned the sentencing. "Mr. Kara-Murza is yet another target of the Russian government's escalating campaign of repression. We renew our call for Mr. Kara-Murza's release, as well as the release of the more than 400 political prisoners in Russia," Patel said at the time.
The death of Navalny further weakens a Russian opposition already decimated by death and imprisonment, with others having gone into exile over fears for their safety.
Agence France-Presse
February 16, 2024
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny February 2, 2021. © AFP
The death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has further diminished a rapidly shrinking Russian opposition, which has seen its members assassinated, sentenced to lengthy prison terms or forced into exile as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes it clear he will not tolerate challenges to his regime.
It was widely feared that Alexei Navalny was risking his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia, even challenging him for the presidency in 2018.
Navalny narrowly survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany. He earned admiration from Russia's disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia the following year.
His death comes just a day before the official launch of campaigning ahead of a new round of presidential elections set for March 15-17.
Putin oversaw changes to the constitution in 2021 that will allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. Putin is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.
On December 8 Putin announced his candidature for re-election and is widely expected to win, given the lack of political alternatives and the Kremlin's iron grip on the state apparatus.
Those who have been brave enough to defy Putin ahead of the vote have been stymied by legal challenges.
Former legislator Yekaterina Duntsova was barred in December from challenging Putin when the Central Election Commission said it was refusing to accept her nomination, citing errors in submitted documents that included misspelled names. Duntsova said she would appeal the decision at the Supreme Court and appealed to the Yabloko (Apple) party to nominate her as a candidate after the party's founder and leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, said he would not be challenging Putin for the presidency.
Duntsova has said she wants to see a more “humane” Russia that is "peaceful, friendly and ready to cooperate with everyone on the principle of respect”.
Another anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, was also disqualified from next month's presidential election. Russia's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected legal challenges to the ruling but Nadezhdin said he would appeal and file a further claim against the electoral commission's refusal to register him as a candidate.
"I don't give up and I won't give up," he said.
An Arctic prison
Navalny was Putin's most vocal critic and the one who garnered the most international recognition, winning the EU's Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2021.
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin found a way to remove him from the running. Navalny was sentenced to 19 more years in prison in August last year on extremism charges. He was already serving a nine-year term for embezzlement and other charges that he maintained were politically motivated.
Navalny briefly disappeared in December from the IK-6 prison colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres east of Moscow, where he had spent most of his detention. His disappearance provoked widespread international alarm, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken releasing a statement on X shortly before Christmas to say he was "deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Aleksey Navalny".
After sending hundreds of requests to detention centres across Russia, Navalny’s allies managed to locate him. In a series of sardonic messages published on X shortly thereafter, Navalny said he was “fine” and “relieved” that he had arrived at his new, and much more remote, Arctic prison.
A BBC reporter said Navalny "looked to be fine" when he appeared via video link at a court hearing the day before his death.
A decimated opposition
When not waylaid by legal challenges, Putin's critics also have a habit of dying prematurely. Opposition politician and former deputy PM Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near Red Square in Moscow in 2015. At the time of his death, the 55-year-old Nemtsov was working on a report that he believed proved the Kremlin’s direct involvement in the pro-Russian separatist rebellion that had erupted in eastern Ukraine the year prior.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was an investigative reporter at top independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya. Politkovskaya, 48, was shot dead in 2006 at the entrance to her Moscow apartment block. Five men were sentenced and imprisoned over her death in 2014; one of them, a former policeman, was pardoned and released in 2023 after fighting in Ukraine.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned Putin critic, died after drinking green tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 at London’s Millennium Hotel in November 2006, six years to the day after he fled Russia for Britain. In a 326-page report on his death, a UK judge said there is a "strong probability" that the killing was "probably approved" by Putin.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a march on Moscow last June after becoming an increasingly vocal critic of Putin's handing of the war in Ukraine. After hours of uncertainty the rebellion fizzled and Prigozhin reportedly agreed to go into exile in Belarus.
He died in a private plane crash two months after launching his aborted challenge. Grenade fragments were found in the bodies of victims at the crash site, according to the Kremlin.
Others have found themselves behind bars, serving lengthy prison sentences. Amid the war in Ukraine, a law criminalising “discrediting the Russian armed forces” was adopted on March 4, 2022; in the three days that followed, more than 60 cases were opened against those accused of violating the new law, “the vast majority” of them peaceful anti-war protesters, according to Human Rights Watch.
Russian political activist and former journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, was sentenced last April to 25 years in prison for publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and spreading "false" information about the Russian military, among other charges.
Kara-Murza, a member of the rapidly shrinking group of opposition figures who remain in Russia, said he was determined to be a voice against both Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel condemned the sentencing. "Mr. Kara-Murza is yet another target of the Russian government's escalating campaign of repression. We renew our call for Mr. Kara-Murza's release, as well as the release of the more than 400 political prisoners in Russia," Patel said at the time.
The death of Navalny further weakens a Russian opposition already decimated by death and imprisonment, with others having gone into exile over fears for their safety.
There are almost “no options for expressing criticism" in Russia, where repression has reached a scale "unequalled since the end of World War II", Russia expert Cécile Vaissié of Rennes-II University told FRANCE 24 shortly after Kara-Murza was sentenced.
But she said a few voices do remain, and their presence in Russia carries "symbolic weight" – even if they are prevented from wielding any real power.
(AFP, AP and Reuters)
But she said a few voices do remain, and their presence in Russia carries "symbolic weight" – even if they are prevented from wielding any real power.
(AFP, AP and Reuters)
'Mourners in Moscow laid flowers at a makeshift memorial for late opposition leader Alexei Navalny'
Issued on: 17/02/2024 -
Video by: Matthew-Mary Caruchet
Despite warnings against public gatherings, mourners in Moscow laid flowers at a makeshift memorial for late opposition leader Alexei Navalny. While the reaction in Russia was muted, protesters in other cities did not pull their punches. In corners of the world with a large, emigrant Russian population, people gathered to protest, accusing Moscow of orchestrating his death less than a month before an election that will give President Putin another six years in power.
Issued on: 17/02/2024 -
Photographs and flowers are left outside the Russian Embassy in London on February 16, 2024, following the news of the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
© Daniel Leal, AFP
Video by: Matthew-Mary Caruchet
Despite warnings against public gatherings, mourners in Moscow laid flowers at a makeshift memorial for late opposition leader Alexei Navalny. While the reaction in Russia was muted, protesters in other cities did not pull their punches. In corners of the world with a large, emigrant Russian population, people gathered to protest, accusing Moscow of orchestrating his death less than a month before an election that will give President Putin another six years in power.
Hundreds detained across Russia at rallies in memory of Navalny
Agence France-Presse
February 17, 2024
Police officers detain a man who laid flowers in tribute to Alexei Navalny at the Memorial to Victims of Political Repression in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 16, 2024. © APAt least 212 people were detained at events in Russia on Friday and Saturday in memory of Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, who died on Friday, according to an independent Russian human rights group.
At least 212 people were detained at events in Russia on Friday and Saturday in memory of Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, who died on Friday, according to an independent Russian human rights group.
It would be the largest wave of arrests at political events in Russia since Sept. 2022, when more than 1,300 were arrested at demonstrations against a "partial mobilisation" of reservists for the military campaign in Ukraine.
Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, authorities said.
OVD-Info, which reports on freedom of assembly in Russia, said at least 212 people in 21 cities across Russia had been detained at spontaneous rallies and vigils as of 1127 GMT on Saturday.
OVD-Info said that police had detained at least 109 people in St Petersburg and at least 39 in Moscow, the country's two largest cities, where Navalny's mostly educated and urban supporters had been concentrated.
The group also reported individual arrests in smaller cities across Russia, from the border city of Belgorod, where seven were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Thursday, to Vorkuta, an Arctic mining outpost once a centre of the Stalin-era gulag labour camps.
Navalny team confirms his death
Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed his death on Saturday, saying official notice had been given to his mother Lydumila. Navalny died at 2:17pm local time (9:17 GMT) on Friday, according to the notice.
Yarmysh later said that Navalny's mother and lawyer went to see the morgue in Salekhard, the town near the prison complex, to find it closed. The lawyer called the morgue and was told that Navalny's body was not there, his team said on Telegram.
An employee at the morgue told Reuters that Navalny's body never arrived.
"Alexei's body is not in the morgue," Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter. She has demanded that his body be handed over to his family.
Police detain mourners at Moscow tribute
Arrests continued Saturday with Russian police detaining people who came to lay flowers at makeshift memorial sites in several cities, according to rights groups and independent media reports.
Video footage published by the independent media outlet Sota showed people in Moscow being taken away by masked police during the silent, peaceful tribute where dozens had gathered.
AFP reporters saw two people being detained and dozens of police surrounding the area, not allowing people to linger near the imposing bronze monument, known as the "Wall of Grief".
Footage filmed by Reuters in Moscow showed law enforcement bundling people to the ground in the snow, close to a spot where mourners had left flowers and messages in support of the dead opposition leader.
"In each police department there may be more detainees than in the published lists," OVD-Info said. "We publish only the names of those people about whom we have reliable knowledge and whose names we can publish."
Reuters could not immediately verify the count.
The hundreds of flowers and candles laid in Moscow on Friday to honour Navalny's memory were mostly taken away overnight in black bags. Russians paying their respects spoke of their despair and apathy after Navalny's death.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
Agence France-Presse
February 17, 2024
Police officers detain a man who laid flowers in tribute to Alexei Navalny at the Memorial to Victims of Political Repression in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 16, 2024. © APAt least 212 people were detained at events in Russia on Friday and Saturday in memory of Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, who died on Friday, according to an independent Russian human rights group.
At least 212 people were detained at events in Russia on Friday and Saturday in memory of Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, who died on Friday, according to an independent Russian human rights group.
It would be the largest wave of arrests at political events in Russia since Sept. 2022, when more than 1,300 were arrested at demonstrations against a "partial mobilisation" of reservists for the military campaign in Ukraine.
Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, authorities said.
OVD-Info, which reports on freedom of assembly in Russia, said at least 212 people in 21 cities across Russia had been detained at spontaneous rallies and vigils as of 1127 GMT on Saturday.
OVD-Info said that police had detained at least 109 people in St Petersburg and at least 39 in Moscow, the country's two largest cities, where Navalny's mostly educated and urban supporters had been concentrated.
The group also reported individual arrests in smaller cities across Russia, from the border city of Belgorod, where seven were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Thursday, to Vorkuta, an Arctic mining outpost once a centre of the Stalin-era gulag labour camps.
Navalny team confirms his death
Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed his death on Saturday, saying official notice had been given to his mother Lydumila. Navalny died at 2:17pm local time (9:17 GMT) on Friday, according to the notice.
Yarmysh later said that Navalny's mother and lawyer went to see the morgue in Salekhard, the town near the prison complex, to find it closed. The lawyer called the morgue and was told that Navalny's body was not there, his team said on Telegram.
An employee at the morgue told Reuters that Navalny's body never arrived.
"Alexei's body is not in the morgue," Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter. She has demanded that his body be handed over to his family.
Police detain mourners at Moscow tribute
Arrests continued Saturday with Russian police detaining people who came to lay flowers at makeshift memorial sites in several cities, according to rights groups and independent media reports.
Video footage published by the independent media outlet Sota showed people in Moscow being taken away by masked police during the silent, peaceful tribute where dozens had gathered.
AFP reporters saw two people being detained and dozens of police surrounding the area, not allowing people to linger near the imposing bronze monument, known as the "Wall of Grief".
Footage filmed by Reuters in Moscow showed law enforcement bundling people to the ground in the snow, close to a spot where mourners had left flowers and messages in support of the dead opposition leader.
"In each police department there may be more detainees than in the published lists," OVD-Info said. "We publish only the names of those people about whom we have reliable knowledge and whose names we can publish."
Reuters could not immediately verify the count.
The hundreds of flowers and candles laid in Moscow on Friday to honour Navalny's memory were mostly taken away overnight in black bags. Russians paying their respects spoke of their despair and apathy after Navalny's death.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
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