Alexei Navalny: Who is the jailed Putin critic some Russians hope could overthrow him?

Published

2 years ago

August 4, 2023

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President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic has been handed a fresh prison term, which could keep him behind bars for another two decades.

Russian politician Alexei Navalny was sentenced by a court to 19 years in jail on Friday after being found guilty of extremism charges relating to the activities of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).

He is already serving a nine-year term for a number of charges that he claims are politically motivated.

Since rising to prominence as an opposition figure in the early 2000s, Navalny has previously been convicted of defying government officials, embezzlement, fraud, parole violations and contempt of court.

The foundation he set up in 2011 has sought to discredit Putin and his associates through well-produced online investigative documentaries that claim to expose their opulent lifestyles.

His persistent online campaigning has gained him a network of loyal followers both in and outside Russia.

It has also seen him repeatedly jailed, barred from running for political office and most famously poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent in 2020.

Here we look at how the biggest thorn in the Kremlin’s side got to where he is now.

Ukrainian heritage

Alexei Navalny was born to factory owners in a village west of Moscow called Butyn in 1976, but grew up in the town of Obninsk, around 60 miles southwest of the Russian capital.

He is Ukrainian on his paternal side and spent summers with his Ukrainian grandmother in the town near Chernobyl where his family are from.

Navalny, now 47, cites the mistreatment of locals after the 1986 nuclear disaster as one of the reasons he first sought to take on the Moscow regime.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Navalny graduated with a law degree from Moscow’s Peoples’ Friendship University in 1998 before gaining a second in economics in 2001.

It was around this time that Vladimir Putin rose to power supported by a circle of oligarchs that bought up state-owned companies and sponsored his United Russia party.

Anti-corruption foundation

To begin with, Navalny expressed nationalist and anti-immigrant views. His focus on government corruption has largely clouded earlier comments about Muslims in Russia, but in 2021 Amnesty International retracted his ‘prisoner of conscious’ status after he failed to distance himself from them.

He joined the liberal Yabloko opposition party in 2000 but was expelled for “nationalist activities” in 2007.

While working as a lawyer in the early 2000s, Navalny started blogging, with the initial aim of protesting against rampant overdevelopment in Moscow.

As the years went by and Putin’s grip on power tightened, his campaigns honed in on corruption of state-run organisations such as gas and oil giants Gazprom and Rosneft.

He bought small shares in the companies along with some state-owned banks so he could ask awkward questions about their funding at AGMs.

In 2010 he founded RosPil, an anti-corruption project run by lawyers that monitored the spending of state-run organisations and enabled them to bring several cases of suspected violations to court.

A year later in 2011 he established his main Anti-Corruption Foundation, which now has millions of followers worldwide through its various social media channels.

In December that year following widespread reports Russia’s parliamentary elections had been rigged, thousands gathered in Moscow to contest the result.

Navalny was the first of around 300 people to be arrested. He was jailed for 15 days for “defying a government official”.

With Putin re-elected and Navalny gaining notoriety, charges against the opposition leader began to stack up. One of the first in 2012 was for embezzlement of the state-owned timber company Kirovles.

Mayor of Moscow bid

In 2013 he ran to be mayor of Moscow, coming second with 27% of the vote and receiving around 97.3 million rubles (£2.3m) in campaign funding.

In a separate case involving the Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics company Yves Rocher, Navalny was placed under house arrest and banned from using the internet in 2014. His team continued to update his blog for him.

Eventually he was handed a three-and-a-half year prison suspended prison sentence – but his brother Oleg was jailed.

In late-2015 FBK’s first long-form investigation was released. The YouTube documentary ‘Chaika’ accused then-Russian prosecutor General Yury Chaika of corruption and ties to a notorious criminal group – and received 26 million views.

A year later Navalny announced his intention to run in the 2018 presidential elections, but he was eventually barred from standing over the outcome of the Kirovles embezzlement case, bringing condemnation from the EU and wider international community.

Another YouTube documentary, this time on former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and his alleged empire of palaces, was released by Navalny and his team in March 2017, racking up seven million views in its first week.

It triggered rallies throughout Russia, subsequent arrests, and Navalny being jailed for organising unauthorised demonstrations.

At one protest, he was attacked with disinfectant by a group of unknown assailants, which damaged his right eye.

Novichok poisoning

It was only three years ago that Navalny’s fight against Putin hit headlines beyond Russia.

On 20 August 2020, he was travelling back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he had been working with local activists, when he fell gravely ill on the plane.

The pilot made an emergency landing in nearby Omsk and Navalny received emergency hospital treatment.

His team immediately accused the Kremlin of poisoning him, which it vehemently denied, and he was flown, still in a coma, to Berlin.

After wide-ranging tests, numerous German medics confirmed he had been poisoned with novichok – the same Soviet-era nerve agent used to poison former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.

His recovery took five months, with his wife Yulia, daughter Dasha and son Zakhar, by his bedside.

Despite the risk of arrest, Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021 where he was immediately detained for allegedly violating the terms of his suspended sentence from the Yves Rocher case.

Fresh wave of anti-Putin protests

News of his arrest triggered some of the biggest protests in Russia since Putin’s rise to power and resulted in thousands of demonstrators being arrested themselves.

Navalny was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for the parole violation, but as before, his team provided updates on him through his Twitter and other social media accounts.

Among them was news of a three-week hunger strike, which Navalny said was due to sleep deprivation and being refused medical treatment.

In June 2021 a Moscow court outlawed his foundation and conducted a series of raids aimed at shutting down its network. Some team members were forced to flee Russia.

Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Navalny used his social media posts and court appearances to protest against the war. At one hearing he described it as “stupid” and “built on lies”.

A month later at short notice he was brought back to court and handed another nine years for embezzlement and contempt of court before being transferred to a maximum-security prison in Vladimir, western Russia.

This hasn’t stopped him and his team relaunching the anti-corruption movement and filing lawsuits over his treatment in prison, which he claims has seen him forced to listen to one of Putin speeches on repeat for 100 days in a row.

Despite his team’s concerns about his health and that he may be being slowly poisoned behind bars, Navalny remains defiant, claiming his death would only further fuel the protest movement.

And in spite of his latest sentence, many in Russia view him as a Nelson Mandela-style figure, who they hope will be released from prison to take over as president when Putin falls.

A documentary about him, which reveals him tricking a chemical weapons expert into seemingly confessing to poisoning his underwear with Novichok, won an Oscar earlier this year.

World

President Trump may walk away from Ukraine peace process, his eldest son says

Published

14 hours ago

December 7, 2025

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President Trump may walk away from Ukraine peace process, his eldest son says

Donald Trump’s eldest son has said his father may walk away from the Ukraine peace process, claiming the issue is not a priority for Americans, and signalling Europe needs a better plan.

In a wide-ranging discussion with Sky’s lead world news presenter Yalda Hakim at Doha Forum 2025, Donald Trump Jr addressed issues including the US administration’s recent diplomatic efforts around the world.

He was speaking in his capacity as a business leader, setting out his agenda for “America first” investments in defence technology and artificial intelligence (AI), drawing a direct line between global stability and economic prosperity.

Ukraine war latest – follow live updates

When asked directly if he believed the US president would walk away from Ukraine, he answered: “I think he may, what’s good about my father and what’s unique about my father is you don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s unpredictable.”

President Trump has led renewed efforts for a ceasefire deal with Russia in recent months.

Drawing a parallel with his father’s current “war” on drug cartels, Donald Trump Jr described gangs bringing illegal drugs into America as a “far greater clear and present danger to the US than anything [going on] in the Ukraine or Russia”.

While he said he did not believe Ukraine would be “abandoned”, he said: “The American public doesn’t have the appetite [for endless wars and further funding of Ukraine’s military efforts].”

Describing Ukraine as “a far more corrupt country than Russia”, he characterised Ukrainian President Zelenskyy as “one of the great marketeers of all time”, who he said had become “a borderline deity, especially to the left”.

He went on to describe President Trump’s approach as “common sense”.

China rivalry was the focus, but Musk got a mention

Yalda Hakim

Lead world news presenter

@SkyYaldaHakim

In a country and at a conference which is friendly, even admiring of the Trump administration, Don Jr was in his element.

He’s here in his capacity as a business leader, promoting his venture, 1789 Capital which claims to be focused on “America First” investments.

But he wasn’t shy about discussing his father’s foreign policy achievements, boasting that Donald Trump had resolved seven or eight wars – conflicts that most ordinary Americans were unaware of.

His pitch is bullish and direct – the current US administration is projecting strength globally, stopping wars and creating investment opportunities which serves the American economy. It’s the MAGA mentality for the global audience.

It’s clear that the rivalry with China is their biggest focus, especially finding ways to combat their dominance over critical minerals.

“America can no longer just sit there and hope that China is going to be a good actor… I think the rest of the world understands that they want America to be at the forefront of all of that.”

When I asked him about recent efforts by President Trump to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, he responded forcefully. “We want peace, we want to stop the death.”

But he went on to say that Europe needed to shoulder the burden and currently they have no plan.

As he sat on the stage in Qatar, the country which has been at the centre of the ceasefire efforts for Gaza, he expressed hope that peace would prevail, but balanced expectations America would fund its re-construction. This would have to be a global effort.

“If there’s one thing my father is, it’s a builder… I think he can be the greatest construction manager in the history of the world, but no one in America wants to bear the entire responsibility of that.”

And, away from international diplomatic efforts, he was happy to announce a breakthrough closer to home.

The “bromance” with Elon Musk and President Trump is back on – calling the entrepreneur a “generational talent, a generational level of genius”.

‘Bromance’ back on

He also confirmed that Tesla billionaire Elon Musk was “100% back in the fold”, after previously appearing to fall out with the president.

Earlier this year, Donald Trump Jr’s investment company, 1789 Capital, heavily invested in some of Musk’s companies, including SpaceX.

Directly comparing President Trump with Musk, he said: “Imagine dealing with one Donald Trump – now I have to deal with two.

“They’re very similar that way, so it created some headaches… but the reality is they’re both very much aligned, they’re on message with what we want to do with our country. What we want to do with freedom of speech.”

He went on: “Elon did incredible things for Twitter, really allowed the democratisation of truth and freedom and free speech to occur. That’s something that is a true threat in America right now.”

He also praised Musk as “changing the face of free speech, science and technology”, adding, “we have to protect our geniuses”.

When asked whether Mr Trump would stand for a third term, he joked that he could be “just trolling” those on the left.

He went on, “He’s the most unpredictable person, probably in the history of politics. Which is why he’s able to get something done. We’ll see.”

World

Woman, 60, and young boy die in house fire

Published

16 hours ago

December 7, 2025

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Woman, 60, and young boy die in house fire

A murder investigation is underway after a woman and young boy died in a house fire in Edenderry, Co Offaly.

Another woman is being treated in hospital for her injuries following the blaze on Saturday at roughly 7.45pm.

Irish police said the house on Castleview Park had been declared a crime scene.

A Garda spokesperson said on Sunday morning that they could confirm two people had died as a result of the fire.

“A female, aged 60 years, and a young boy were fatally injured,” they said.

“A second female, aged in her 50s, is receiving treatment for serious injuries at a hospital in the Midlands.

Gardai in Tullamore are appealing for witnesses to come forward.

World

Inside a secret, underground military base in eastern Ukraine

Published

23 hours ago

December 7, 2025

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Inside a secret, underground military base in eastern Ukraine

A hidden, underground military base in eastern Ukraine is so secret, soldiers change into civilian clothes whenever they step outside to avoid drawing attention.

Journalists are not usually allowed access.

But the unit that has been using this vast, subterranean warren of war rooms, a dormitory, kitchen, canteen and makeshift gym as its headquarters since the summer is imminently relocating, so Sky News was invited inside.

Lieutenant Colonel Arsen Dimitric – call sign Lemko – is the chief of staff of 1st Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine, one of the country’s most effective combat forces.

He sat with us in the base, next to a large square table, covered by a map of the Donbas region.

His soldiers have been fighting in this area since the summer, countering a surge in Russian attacks in and around the frontline city of Pokrovsk.

“We aim to destroy as much of the enemy as possible,” he said.

“Will we take losses? Yes. Will it hurt? Absolutely.”

But he said if Russia is allowed to advance, even more Ukrainians will suffer.

“Their [the Russians’] only advantage is numbers,” he said.

“They don’t care how many people they lose.”

Lemko said almost 17,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded fighting in this section of the warzone alone between August to November.

Ukrainian video footage of the battlefield showed Russian armoured vehicles being taken out by drones and artillery fire.

At one point, Russian soldiers mounted on motorbikes try to advance, only to be stopped by Ukrainian fire.

“Our task is to hit them as hard as possible in various areas,” Lemko said. “We focus on our operations, others on theirs, and leadership will negotiate the best possible terms.”

The Azov Corps soldiers are fighting over land that should be handed over to Russia, according to an initial draft of a peace deal proposal between Kyiv and Moscow put forward by the United States. This is despite swathes of the Donbas remaining under Ukrainian control.

But General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the head of the Ukrainian armed forces, has since told Sky News that simply surrendering territory would be “unacceptable”.

For Lemko, he says the job of his troops is to inflict as much damage as possible on the Russian side to help strengthen Ukraine’s hand in negotiations.

“Simply giving it [land] away isn’t the way,” he said.

“Diplomats do their work, we do ours. Our job as soldiers is to give as many advantages as possible to our negotiating team. And we’re doing exactly that.”

Lemko, who has been battling against Russia since the Crimean annexation in 2014, also had a warning for the rest of Europe about a rise in hybrid attacks, such as mysterious drone sightings, acts of sabotage and cyber hacks suspected of being linked to Moscow.

He said Ukraine’s experience showed that if attacks by Russia that fall under the threshold of conventional war are not successfully countered, full-scale conflict could follow.

“Ukraine once lost a hybrid war that had been waged since the very start of our independence,” he said.

“Because of that defeat, there was a physical operation against us in Crimea and then a physical operation in 2022.

“Now the hybrid war has reached its climax, and it is moving into the Baltic States and Europe.

“That is why, in my opinion – and in the opinion of most of our officers – now is the moment for all countries to unite and counter this hybrid war. Because the consequence may be a physical one.”

Production: Katy Scholes, security and defence producer, and Azad Safarov, Ukraine producer.

Camera operator: Mostyn Pryce