Alexei Navalny lived and died fighting against Vladimir Putin’s regime and the corruption at its heart.
Barred in 2018 from running in elections, he remained Mr Putin’s most powerful political opponent.
He was the one man capable of bringing tens of thousands on to the streets calling for a Russia without Mr Putin – and the one man Russia’s president famously refused to mention by name.
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He was stubborn, sarcastic and exceptionally charismatic – a born populist with a sense of humour which appealed especially to the young.
His YouTube investigations into Mr Putin’s cronies, and finally the president himself, garnered millions of views and exposed graft of the highest order. He acquired ever more powerful enemies.
For a decade, Mr Navalny was tolerated by the Kremlin. He endured a seemingly endless succession of arrests, court appearances and periods in detention but he survived.
In August 2020, that changed.
Poisoned while on a fact-finding mission
Alexei Navalny talks with his lawyers Olga Mikhailova, left, and Vadim Kobzev during a hearing in 2021. Pic: AP
The economic situation was deteriorating and discontent aggravated by the pandemic was growing.
Coupled with that, the Kremlin had an eye on parliamentary elections the following year, which Mr Navalny had vowed to disrupt through an alternative voting system.
In a hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, on a fact-finding mission for one of his investigations, Mr Navalny was poisoned.
The groans recorded by a fellow passenger on the flight back to Moscow were the first indication that something terrible was wrong.
Moments later he fell into a coma.
He later said his life was saved by the pilot, who executed an emergency landing despite warnings of a bomb threat at the airport, and by paramedics who immediately administered the antidote atropine on the airport tarmac.
For three days Mr Navalny’s wife Yulia fought to have him airlifted to Berlin, finally making an appeal directly to Mr Putin, while doctors in Omsk where he was in hospital dithered over the diagnosis.
Alexei Navalny embraces his wife Yulia, as he was released in a courtroom in 2013. Pic: AP
Alexei Navalny, with his wife Yulia, right, daughter Daria, and son Zakhar in 2019. Pic: AP
Once in Berlin, a German military laboratory identified the poison in question. It was novichok, the weapons grade nerve agent used two years earlier against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.
Once again – a banned chemical weapon – and an attack which bore all the hallmarks of the Russian state.
Investigating from his hospital bed
The West imposed sanctions and demanded a full investigation. But the Kremlin refused, even going so far as to suggest Mr Navalny may have poisoned himself.
Mr Putin shrugged off the accusations and returned to a familiar theme, that Mr Navalny was an agent of the West.
“Who needs him anyway?”, the Russian president said at his annual news conference.
“If [they] had wanted to, they would have probably finished it.”
In the care of doctors at Berlin’s Charite hospital, Mr Navalny made a long but miraculous recovery.
From his hospital bed, he laid the groundwork for his most damning investigation yet – into what he called “Putin’s palace”, a billion dollar residence on Russia’s Black Sea coast.
Thanks too to the investigative work of Bellingcat and its Russian partners, he was able to determine the identities of the six intelligence officers who had poisoned him – even managing to get one of them to admit that the poison had been placed in his underpants.
After his recuperation, Mr Navalny stunned the world by saying he would return to Russia.
“Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, I miss them,” he posted on Instagram.
He knew what was in store. He was arrested at passport control for supposedly breaking parole and placed in pre-trial detention.
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Alexei Navalny looks at a camera while speaking from a prison via a video link in 2022. Pic: AP
Two days later his Putin’s Palace investigation went viral. Within weeks it had been viewed more than 100 million times.
A lawyer himself, Mr Navalny never faced due process against a raft of politically motivated prosecutions – but he never gave up the fight. And he asked the people not to give up either.
“I am fighting as best I can,” he said in one court appearance. “And I will continue to do so, despite the fact that I’m now under the control of people who love to smear everything with chemical weapons.
“My life isn’t worth two cents, but I will do everything I can so that the law prevails. And I salute all the honest people across the country who aren’t afraid and who take to the streets.”
Tens of thousands did in cities across the country – the largest unsanctioned protests in Putin’s Russia.
More than 10,000 people were detained. But those would be the last large-scale protests Russia would witness.
Constant rotation through solitary confinement
When Mr Putin invaded Ukraine, Mr Navalny called on the people from his jail cell to take a stand, but only a small minority were brave enough to try. Anti-war protests were quickly crushed.
Despite his best efforts to give a voice to the people, his message failed to resonate with a majority of Russians, cowed by two decades’ of Mr Putin’s rule.
The Kremlin piled fresh charges against him of extremism and terrorism – one count, absurdly, being the rehabilitation of Nazism.
In August 2023, he was sentenced to a further 19 years in jail in a special penal regime, for the very worst offenders.
It was effectively a death sentence. On constant rotation through solitary confinement, Mr Navalny’s health deteriorated.
His death in prison at just 47 is another appalling stain on the conscience of the Russian state.
It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
The aftermath of Israel’s bombing campaign in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Another one of child victims of the attack
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
Read more:
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“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.
China’s economy performed better than expected in the first quarter of the year – but it reflects a moment in time before the explosive trade war with the US, which has seen the world’s two biggest economies effectively decouple.
Economists had predicted that gross domestic product would grow by about 5.1% in January to March, compared with a year earlier. In the end, it grew 5.4%.
But these impressive figures obscure the very serious challenges China’s economy is facing in the wake of Donald Tump’s trade war – and it is almost certain growth will not remain this strong as the year goes on.
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Bobble-headed Trump explains China-US tariffs
The worst of Trump’s tariffs came into force in April, meaning they were not reflected in these figures.
In Q1, China faced an initial 10% tariff on all its exports to the US – which was then raised to 20% from 10 March.
But Beijing had planned and prepared for taxes at that level, and thus the impact was pretty minimal.
Growth was also propelled by the fact that exporters rushed to deliver orders in bulk before the tariffs came into force.
In fact, exports surged a remarkable 12% in March compared to a year earlier, a rate that will not be sustained.
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Trump Tariffs: How the 10 days unfolded
Current tariffs on goods sold from China to America stand at 145%. Trade at that price is all but impossible.
Given exports account for a fifth of China’s economy, and consumer confidence domestically is still sluggish, there will be a significant hit to come.
Experts agree China will most likely miss its annual growth target of 5% – the question is by how much.
It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.
Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.
It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.
The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.
The remains of Salah Jundia’s home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City
Salah Jundia
Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.
Then he looked for his father and brothers.
“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.
Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”
Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.
One of the child victims of the attack on the home near the Gaza City
Another one of child victims of the attack
An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.
Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.
The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.
Rescuers drilling to try and reach the people trapped below the rubble
Efforts to free those trapped beneath the rubble near the Gaza City
In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.
Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.
He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.
Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.
They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.
It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.
Members of Salah Jundia’s family left alive after the attack
Salah Jundia and his surviving family
Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.
The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.
“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.
They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”
The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.
In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.
The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.
“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.
He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.
Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.
Read more:
Israeli air strike hits Gaza hospital
Red dye dumped into US embassy in Israel protest
Israel shot at ambulances over ‘perceived threat’
“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.
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