Russian activist and politician Alexei Navalny, who gained international recognition as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, dies in prison at age 47.
For more than a decade, Navalny waged a grassroots opposition campaign against Putin and his party, calling them “swindlers and thieves.” Navalny gained legions of supporters during an unsuccessful run for mayor of Moscow in 2013, and Russian authorities routinely arrested and imprisoned Navalny for protesting without a permit.
In 2020, Navalny became violently ill on a flight from Siberia. He was taken to Germany for treatment, where authorities confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok, the same deadly toxin used to attack a former Soviet spy in England in 2018.
Navalny recovered and continued his campaign against Putin and what he claimed was widespread corruption in the Russian government. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 knowing he would be arrested. In a series of trials denounced as “shams” by international observers, Navalny was convicted of embezzlement and “extremism” and sentenced to an Arctic prison until at least 2031.
Navalny died from unknown causes on February 16, 2024, leaving behind his wife, Yulia, and two children. U.S. intelligence authorities concluded that Putin didn’t directly order Navalny’s death, although they held Putin responsible as his imprisonment under brutal conditions was clearly politically motivated. Months after Navalny’s death, Putin won his fifth landslide presidential election in a vote that western nations declared was neither free nor fair.
