Alexei Navalny: The one man Putin refused to mention by name – who never gave up fight against Russia’s corrupt regime
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.
More than 100 politicians from 24 different countries, including the UK, the US and the EU, have written a joint letter condemning China over the “arbitrary detention and unfair trial” of Jimmy Lai, a tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner.
The parliamentarians, led by senior British Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, are “urgently” demanding the immediate release of the 77-year-old British citizen, who has been held in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in Hong Kong for almost four years.
The letter – which will be embarrassing for Beijing – was made public on the eve of Mr Lai’s trial resuming and on the day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a G20 summit of economic powers in Brazil.
It also comes as Hong Kong jailed 45 pro-democracy activists.
The group of politicians, who also include representatives from Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Ukraine and France, said Mr Lai’s treatment was “inhumane”.
“He is being tried on trumped-up charges arising from his peaceful promotion of democracy, his journalism and his human rights advocacy,” they wrote in the letter, which has been seen by Sky News.
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Starmer meets Chinese president
“The world is watching as the rule of law, media freedom and human rights in Hong Kong are eroded and undermined.
“We stand together in our defence of these fundamental freedoms and in our demand that Jimmy Lai be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Sir Keir raised the case of Mr Lai during remarks released at the start of his talks with Mr Xi on Monday – the first meeting between a British prime minister and the Chinese leader in six years.
The prime minister could be heard expressing concerns about reports of Mr Lai’s deteriorating health. However, he did not appear to call for his immediate release.
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From October: ‘This is what Hong Kong is’
Ms Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Stamford in the East Midlands, said the meeting had been an opportunity to be unequivocal that the UK expects Mr Lai to be freed.
“Jimmy Lai is being inhumanely persecuted for standing up for basic human values,” she said in a statement, released alongside the letter.
“He represents the flame of freedom millions seek around the world.
“We have a duty to fight for Jimmy Lai as a British citizen, and to take a stand against the Chinese Community Party’s erosion of rule of law in Hong Kong.
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“This letter represents the strength of international feeling and commitment of parliamentarians globally to securing Jimmy Lai’s immediate release and return to the UK with his family.”
Mr Lai was famously the proprietor of the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, which wrote scathing reports about the local authorities and the communist government in mainland China after Britain handed back the territory to Beijing in 1997.
The tabloid was a strong supporter of pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets of Hong Kong to demonstrate against the government in 2019.
But the media mogul was arrested the following year – one of the first victims of a draconian new security law imposed by the Chinese Communist Party.
His newspaper was closed after his bank accounts were frozen.
Mr Lai has since been convicted of illegal assembly and fraud. He is now on trial for sedition over articles published in Apple Daily.
World
Hong Kong jails 45 pro-democracy activists after accusing them of trying to overthrow the city’s government
Forty-five pro-democracy activists have been jailed in Hong Kong’s largest ever national security trial.
The activists sentenced with jail terms ranging from four years to ten years were accused of conspiracy to commit subversion after holding an unofficial primary election in Hong Kong in 2020.
They were arrested in 2021.
Hong Kong authorities say the defendants were trying to overthrow the territory’s government.
Democracy activist Benny Tai received the longest sentence of ten years. He became the face of the movement when thousands of protesters took to the city’s streets during the “Umbrella Movement” demonstrations.
However, Hong Kong officials accused him of being behind the plan to organise elections to select candidates.
Tai had pleaded guilty, his lawyers argued he believed his election plan was allowed under the city’s Basic Law.
Another prominent activist Joshua Wong received a sentence of more than four years.
Joshua Wong was sentenced to more than four years Pic: AP
Wong became one of the leading figures in the protests. His activism started as a 15 year old when he spearheaded a huge rally against a government plan to change the school curriculum.
Then in 2019 Hong Kong erupted in protests after the city’s government proposed a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China. It peaked in June 2019 when Amnesty International reported that up to two million people marched on the streets, paralysing parts of Hong Kong’s business district.
The extradition bill was later dropped but it had ignited a movement demanding political change and freedom to elect their own leaders in Hong Kong.
China’s central government called the protests “riots” that could not continue.
Hong Kong introduced a national security law in the aftermath of the protests.
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A woman is taken away by police outside the court Pic: Reuters
The US has called the trial “politically motivated”.
Dozens of family and friends of the accused were waiting for the verdict outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court.
British citizen and media mogul Jimmy Lai is due to testify on Wednesday.
Meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in Brazil, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told China’s President Xi Jinping he’s concerned about the health of Lai.
He faces charges of fraud and the 2019 protests. He has also been charged with sedition and collusion with foreign forces.
Tens of thousands of people have marched on New Zealand’s parliament in a protest in support of Maori rights.
The huge crowds took to the streets of Wellington in opposition to a law that could reshape the country’s founding treaty between the indigenous Maori people and the British crown.
The march was described as likely the country’s largest-ever protest in support of Maori rights.
The crowds gathered outside of New Zealand’s parliament.
Pic: AP
“We’re fighting for our tamariki [children], for our mokopuna [grandchildren], so they can have what we haven’t been able to have,” Shanell Bob said as she waited for the march to begin.
“It’s different to when I was a child. We’re stronger now, our tamariki [children] are stronger now, they know who they are, they’re proud of who they are.”
The bill the protesters oppose is unpopular and unlikely to become law, but opposition to it has exploded.
It would change the meaning of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and prevent its principles from applying only to the Maori people – whose chiefs signed the document when New Zealand was colonised.
Tens of thousands of people walked through the streets of Wellington.
Pic: AP
Considered New Zealand’s founding document, it laid out the principles guiding the relationship between the British crown and the Maori in two versions – one in English and one in Maori.
The document gave Maori the same rights and privileges as British citizens, but the English and Maori versions differed in the degree to which the chiefs ceded power over their affairs, lands and autonomy.
Over time, the colonial rulers breached both versions, with Maori language and culture dwindling – the country’s indigenous people often barred from practicing it – and tribal land was confiscated.
Pic: AP
What’s in the controversial bill?
The bill has been drawn up by the libertarian ACT New Zealand party, a junior partner in the ruling centre-right coalition government.
It seeks to enshrine a narrower interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which it says discriminates against non-indigenous citizens.
Critics say it is motivated by a desire to reverse decades of policies that aimed to empower Maori people, who make up around 20% of the 5.3 million population.
New Zealand’s opposition leader Chris Hipkins (left) does a hongi with Hare Arapere as people gathered outside New Zealand’s parliament.
Pic: AP
In recent years, interpretation of clauses in the treaty have frequently guided legislation and policy, with rulings by the courts and a separate Maori tribunal resulting in growing Maori rights and privileges in the decades since independence in 1947.
The bill’s author, libertarian politician David Seymour, says that process of redress, following the earlier decades of breaches of the treaty, has created special treatment for the Maori – which he opposes.
Pic: AP
‘We’re going for a walk!’
“We’re going for a walk!” one organiser said from a stage, as crowds gathered at the opposite end of New Zealand’s capital at the beginning of the protest.
Some people taking part had travelled the length of the country over the past nine days.
Pic: AP
Diverse groups waited with Maori sovereignty flags at bus stops, which would have usually been occupied by morning commuters.
Youngsters were among those taking part as some schools said they wouldn’t register students as absent if they attended.
The city’s mayor joined in the protest as well as other politicians.
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Pic: AP
The Maori haka was performed by protesters as thousands more held signs in support as they lined the streets.
Some carried placards that bore jokes or insults aimed at politicians behind the bill, while others expressed pride in Maori identity, support for the protest or denounced the colonisation of the country.
Police said that about 42,000 people walked to the parliament’s grounds, with some spilling into the surrounding streets.
People sought the best vantage points, with some cramming themselves on to a children’s slide, as others climbed trees.
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New Zealand politician David Seymour.
Pic: AP
The legislation made it through its first vote last Thursday, after Mr Seymour made a political deal.
ACT’s coalition partners, the National Party and New Zealand First, agreed to support the bill through the first of its three readings, but both have said they will not support it to become law.
Mr Seymour briefly walked out on to the parliament’s forecourt to observe the protest and was booed by some.
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