Alexei Navalny; A staunch opposition with a complicated legacy

According to the international group Tasnim news agency, “Alexei Navalny”, a pro-Western opponent of the Russian government and one One of the most important opponents of “Vladimir Putin”, the president of Russia in the last decade, died last Friday (16 February/27 Bahman) in a prison in the “Northern Orbit”.

Navalny was 47 years old at the time of his death and He was sentenced to 19 years in this prison on charges of “extremist activities”. He is remembered in the West as a brave hero, in Ukraine as an extreme Russian nationalist, and at home as a figure with a complex and contradictory legacy.

He was born in 1976; He graduated from law school in 1998 and earned a degree in finance in 2001, but left those fields to enter politics. In 2009, in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper, he said: “I have always been concerned about entering politics.” Between 2000 and 2007, Navalny was a member of the liberal party “Yabloko” and after that, with the cooperation of several others, he started He founded another nationalist movement called “Narod”. Soon after, he made headlines by participating in two controversial YouTube videos.

In one of those videos, he supported the right to have weapons to fight “insects and cockroaches”, meaning to fight Muslims in It was South Caucasus. In another video, he compared immigrants from Muslim countries to rotten teeth.

August 2008 Navalny supported Russia’s intervention against Georgia in favor of “South Ossetia”. He participated in three annual marches in support of ethnic nationalism. A long time later, one of the Russian activists claimed that Navalny’s purpose of participating in this march was to turn the ethnic nationalism movement against the Kremlin. A little later, Navalny tried to present himself as a whistleblower in England. Navalny launched a group called “Union of Minority Shareholders” and exposed corruption in some large state-owned companies such as “Rosneft”, “Gazprom” and Lukoil.

In 2011, the “Anti-Corruption Foundation” that Navalny He established a harsher position towards Moscow and he directly accused the Russian government, local governors and companies of financial fraud, embezzlement and corruption, and of course he himself was prosecuted in numerous judicial cases for defamation.

In February 2011 he referred to Russia’s ruling party as a bunch of “tricksters and thieves” and in December 2011 he claimed that the election had been rigged. From this time on, the western media focused on him and after giving several speeches in anti-government demonstrations, the western media gave him the nickname “the leader of the Russian opposition”.

The peak of Navalny’s success in politics In the July 2013 election, he came second in the race to become the mayor of Moscow and received 27.24% of the votes. The Election Commission prevented him from running for the 2018 presidential election due to his criminal record,

Court charges against Navalny

Navalny’s first charge of embezzlement from a company State forestry named “Kerfels”, which is active in the wood market, was registered. He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013, but this sentence was later changed to suspended imprisonment. The European Court of Human Rights condemned the ruling in 2016, saying that Navalny’s rights had been violated and ordered Russia to pay him compensation. which Navalny founded as a “foreign agent” and severely limited his activities.

August 2020, Navalny fell unconscious on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow over Siberia and was taken to a hospital in the city. “Amsk” was transferred. A German charity convinced Russian authorities to send Navalny to Berlin for treatment.

The German government announced a month later that he had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. Moscow described the claim as “provocative” and denied any attempt to kill Navalny. During the time when Navalny was in prison, his issue had become one of the main concerns of the Western media.

However, Mr. Navalny regained his health after some time and was discharged from the hospital. He returned to Russia five months after his poisoning and was arrested at the airport. After that, Alexei Navalny was found guilty many times in court and received long prison sentences. In 2022, he was sentenced to 9 years and in 2023 to 19 years in prison for financing extremist activities. Some unconfirmed reports suggest that the Russian dissident’s mother was told he died of “sudden death syndrome”. This syndrome refers to sudden death due to a heart attack.

Ryanovsti news agency in its report on Friday, quoting judicial sources of this country, announced that Navalny felt uncomfortable after a walk and immediately lost consciousness. he lost. According to this report, the medical staff of the prison intervened to revive him and an emergency medical team was called; They tried to revive Navalny, but were unsuccessful.

However, some Russian media reported that he died of a blood clot. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the investigation into the death is ongoing and all measures are being taken. Western media and officials, however, claimed that Navalny was “killed.” US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death. The Kremlin spokesman has described such statements as “stupid” considering that the result of the investigation is not clear.

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