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.
The murder trial of a former senior politician in Kazakhstan who has been accused of beating his wife to death has attracted the attention of the nation, sparking calls for new legislation tackling domestic violence.
Shocking footage showing businessman Kuandyk Bishimbayev, Kazakhstan’s former economy minister, beating his wife at a family restaurant has been streamed online from the court.
The case has touched a nerve among the public as tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for new laws to hold those guilty of abuse to account.
Disturbing CCTV footage shows the former senior politician hitting his wife
Why is the case so high profile?
The trial of Bishimbayev, 44, is the first in the country to ever be streamed online – making it readily accessible to the 19 million people in Kazakhstan.
The former politician was already well known, having been jailed for bribery in 2018. He spent less than two years of his 10-year sentence in prison before he was pardoned.
Bishimbayev admitted last month in court that he had beaten his wife. Pic: Kazakhstan Supreme Court Press Office/Telegram/AP
Bishimbayev was charged with torturing and killing his wife after her death last November. For weeks, he maintained his innocence but admitted last month in court that he had beaten her and “unintentionally” caused her death.
Saltanat Nukenova, 31, was found dead in November in a restaurant owned by one of her husband’s relatives.
Disturbing CCTV footage shows the defendant, a father of four, dragging his wife by her hair, and then punching and kicking her.
Hours after it was recorded, she died of brain trauma.
Bishimbayev was jailed for bribery in 2018. Pic: Kazakhstan Supreme Court Press Office/Telegram/AP
Bishimbayev’s lawyers initially disputed medical evidence indicating Ms Nukenova died from repeated blows to the head.
They also portrayed her as prone to jealousy and violence, although no video from the restaurant’s security cameras that was played in court has shown her attacking Bishimbayev.
According to a 2018 study backed by UN Women, about 400 women die as a result of domestic violence in Kazakhstan every year, although many go unreported.
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What reaction has the trial caused?
Tens of thousands of people in the country have signed a petition calling for harsher measures against perpetrators of domestic violence in the wake of Ms Nukenova’s tragic death.
The signatures resulted in senators approving a bill which toughens spousal abuse laws last month – dubbed “Saltanat’s Law”.
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Aitbek Amangeldy, Ms Nukenova’s brother and a key prosecution witness, told the Associated Press he had no doubt his sister’s tragic fate has shifted attitudes about domestic violence.
“It changes people’s minds when they see directly what it looks like when a person is tortured.”
Police in riot gear have raided Columbia University and arrested pro-Palestinian protesters occupying one of its buildings.
Around 30 to 40 people have been removed from the Manhattan university’s Hamilton Hall, according to police.
The raid came hours after New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the demonstration at the Ivy League school “must end now”.
He also claimed the demonstration had been infiltrated by “professional outside agitators”.
University bosses said they called in the New York Police Department (NYPD) after protesters “chose to escalate the situation through their actions”.
“After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalised, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” a university spokesman said in a statement.
“The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing.
“We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”
Police enter Hamilton Hall. Pic: Reuters
Police gather around Columbia University before moving in to break-up the protest. Pic: Reuters
Police stand guard near an encampment of protesters on the grounds of Columbia University. Pic: Reuters
Arrested protesters from Columbia University are loaded onto a bus. Pic: Reuters
The protest began when students barricaded the entrance of Hamilton Hall at Columbia’s campus on Tuesday and unfurled a Palestinian flag out of a window.
Video footage showed protesters locking arms in front of the hall and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building.
Those behind the protest said they had renamed the building “Hind’s Hall” in honour of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl killed in a strike on Gaza in February.
Protesters unfurled a flag with the words ‘Hind’s Hall’. Pic: Reuters
Protesters hang banners on the exterior of Hamilton Hall building. Pic: Reuters
Demonstrators said they had planned to remain at the hall until the university conceded to the Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s (CUAD) three demands: divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.
“Columbia will be proud of these students in five years,” said Sweda Polat, one of the student negotiators for CUAD.
She said students did not pose a danger and called on police to back down.
Officers raided the campus on Tuesday night after university bosses wrote to New York City officials and the NYPD formally asking for assistance.
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A large group of officers dressed in riot gear entered the campus late on Tuesday evening. Officers were also seen entering the window of a university building via a police-branded ladder vehicle, nicknamed “the bear”.
Earlier, Mayor Adams urged demonstrators to leave the site. “Walk away from this situation now and continue your advocacy through other means,” he said.
Columbia University also threatened academic expulsions for students involved in the demonstration.
Protesters block the entrance of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. Pic: AP
Demonstrators block the entrance of Hamilton Hall. Pic: AP
Protests at Columbia earlier this month kicked off demonstrations which have spread to university campuses from California to Massachusetts.
Dozens of people were arrested on Monday during protests at universities in Texas, Utah, Virginia, and New Jersey.
Police moved to clear an encampment at Yale University in Connecticut on Tuesday morning, but there were no immediate reports of arrests.
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Meanwhile, the president of the University of South California issued a statement on Tuesday after a swastika was drawn on the campus.
“I condemn any antisemitic symbols or any form of hate speech against anyone,” Carol Folt said.
“Clearly it was drawn there just to incite even more anger at a time that is so painful for our community. We’re going to work to get to the bottom of this immediately, and it has just been removed.”
Earlier, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said President Joe Biden believed students occupying buildings was “absolutely the wrong approach” and “not an example of peaceful protest”.
World
Georgia: Police use water cannon, tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters opposing ‘foreign agent’ bill
Police in Georgia’s capital have used water cannon, tear gas and stun grenades against crowds outside the country’s parliament protesting against a bill the opposition says aims to crack down on press freedoms.
The legislation being debated by parliamentarians will require media and non-commercial organisations to register as being under foreign influence if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad.
Police used water cannon to disperse protesters. Pic: AP
Pic: AP
Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the streets of Tbilisi on Tuesday to oppose the legislation.
Clashes erupted between security forces and protesters as they faced tear gas, water cannon and stun grenades.
Thousands gathered to oppose the legislation. Pic: AP
Pic: AP
Pic: AP
Reuters eyewitnesses saw some police officers physically attack protesters, who threw eggs and bottles at them, before deploying the tactics to force crowds from outside the parliament building, the news agency reported.
After being dispersed, thousands continued to block Tbilisi’s main Rustaveli Avenue, barricading it with cafe tables and rubbish bins. Some shouted “slaves” and “Russians” at police.
Clashes erupted between police and demonstrators. Pic: AP
Levan Khabeishvili, the leader of Georgia‘s largest opposition party, the United National Movement, posted an image on X with his face bloodied and sporting a black eye.
A party official told Reuters that Mr Khabeishvili was beaten by police after disappearing from central Tbilisi.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who is opposed to the bill and whose powers are mostly ceremonial, said in a post on X the crackdown had been “totally unwarranted, unprovoked and out of proportion” and that the protests had been peaceful.
Demonstrators sit in protest. Pic: AP
Pic: AP
The bill has heightened political divisions, setting the ruling Georgian Dream party against a protest movement backed by opposition groups, communities, celebrities and the figurehead president.
It is viewed by the opposition as authoritarian and bearing a resemblance to Russian anti-independent media legislation.
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Politicians brawl in parliament
Critics have labelled the divisive bill “the Russian law”, comparing it to Moscow’s “foreign agent” legislation which has been used to crack down on dissent there.
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Parliament endorsed the bill in the first reading earlier this month. It must pass two more readings before becoming law.
A protester holds up an EU flag. Pic: AP
Those opposed to the legislation see it as an impediment to Georgia’s long-sought prospects of joining the European Union.
EU officials have said it could halt Georgia’s progress towards integration with the bloc.
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