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Alexei Navalny, galvanizing opposition leader and Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in prison, Russia says
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- Title
- Russia's prison service says that imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died
- Published
- Feb 16 2024
- Word count
- 651 words
https://apnews.com/article/russia-navalny-dead-opposition-leader-2d11644f7ae5332587b39150f1fd1738
I'm going to assume people know most of the story of his poisoning through his arrest and share some other... interesting points:
This is a lie. Navalny never supported the annexation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/world/europe/navalnys-comments-on-crimea-ignite-russian-twittersphere.html
He said that after the annexation it was impossible to undo it. Ask a Ukranian on how they imagine Crimea being returned to Ukraine. The answer won't be simple.
The "interviewer" was setting up Navalny. You could not answer that Crimea belonged to Ukraine while you are in Russia - you would be put in jail. He was already under house arrest at the time of the interview.
Read the interview in question here: https://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-hundreds-of-russians-poisoned-25-dead-in-spice-drug-epidemic/#4625
Ah I didn't know that. I thought Reuters was a credible source, that's why I chose it.
For the AP source: https://apnews.com/article/russia-navalny-dead-opposition-leader-2d11644f7ae5332587b39150f1fd1738
Apparently the Russian media announcement went out 2 minutes after his official time of death. That's a very short time to draft and distribute a press release.
I mean, they probably had the thing on standby for years...
That said, two minutes is too fast to get someone to hit the send button without prior knowledge, even during the work day.
That’s a strong claim. What’s the basis? I have found Reuters to be pretty much unimpeachable in their quality of reporting.
That poor country can never catch a break. And while I, too, hope somebody steps up to help overthrow Putin, it really does seem like he's going to rule for life.
You've got to admire a guy who knew that staying in Russia would ultimately be a death sentence and did it anyway.
I don't mean to sound dismissive, this is a genuine question - what's admirable about it? Was he hoping to become a martyr? What was gained by him returning to Russia to die - if he didn't have to, what was the point? I feel like I'm missing something.
Oh I definitely understand this from a voting perspective, but it seemed to me like he had more of a presence and voice when he was free, and now he's gone. As others have said it's too soon to know what impact his death will have, let's just hope it wasn't in vain.
Acts of personal and political bravery can also very well inspire others to have the same courage as well, which in any oppressive regime is absolutely vital. Sacrifice, especially of one’s own life or freedom, sends an extremely powerful political message because the ultimate power of the regime is to threaten people’s life and freedom. This sends the message that even that power is not enough to silence dissent and opposition.
I think this old quote summarizes my feelings about this type of sacrifice.
"Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sit"
History has long shown that people need willing leaders to fall on the barbed wire before the masses can cross and I think he knew that better than most.
To add one more thing to what others said, it was also because of political culture in Russia.
Outside of Tildes you will find many people complaining that he was not sufficiently liberal, pro-western, didn't want to return Crimea to Ukraine etc., all legitimate criticisms. His movement was built on a cult of personality, at its core not that different from Putin's. It was not a grassroots democratic movement, it was a movement supporting a strongman leader.
This is on purpose because this is what mainstream Russia wants. Russians see western liberal democrats as weak and incapable, such politicians would never have the potential to be a true opposition to Putin, no matter how good they were.
In this context Navalny escaping Russia and doing exile activism would lose all of his power because he would immediately stop being the brave strongman that he needed to be to truly be a political alternative. People would stop respecting him. So it's not that he was going back to Russia to do a specific thing, it's that if he wanted to keep his influence and respect, going back to Russia was the only option for him, even though he surely knew he might be killed for that.
He was no saint, far from it, but I admire the tremendous bravery and determination.
Thank you this is a very interesting perspective that makes a lot of sense. I suppose most of us expected he'd die one way or another if he went back. I hadn't considered he might have thought he'd have a real chance to live.
To memory the reason he gave was mostly that he didn't feel anything he'd do if he stayed out of russia would have an impact.
He probably wasn't hoping to be a martyr, preferring that the Putin regime would end and he'd be free (as he knew that was the only way he'd leave prison alive), but preferred to show he was serious either way about changing things.
I have no idea if he's actually as good as people make him out to be, but he did make a very serious decision. How much that will matter is pretty much impossible to say. He clearly had support and wound up a figure at the head of a movement, but knowing if that would have worked better if he lived in exile as opposed to dying in captivity is can't be known.
This response makes the most sense to me. If he felt he would have less of an impact being free, then it was certainly brave to make the decision to risk his life in prison for the cause. We'll have to hope his sacrifice will help Russia move on to better things, even if it will take a long time.
@rez and @gpl both put it very well.
A less reported part of this. Today was the Munich security conference where years ago Putin declared the west as his public enemy. Yulia Navalnaya was a speaker there. It’s not a coincidence he died today.
https://youtu.be/8Kc4ZuyRAbc
The world is full of tragedies, but this one really hurts.
Alexei Navalny was not a perfect person and had troubling aspects. But his commitment to higher principles of democracy was deeply admirable. He chose to return to Russia. He had to have known that he would someday Putin's government would eventually kill him, yet he still chose to return to stoically engage in non-violent opposition and die for it.
The human race produces very few of these individuals.
I didn't follow this whole saga about him closely, but IIRC he was poisoned, it was proven to be Russian agents who did it, and Putin/Russia was pretty open about what they wanted to do to him.
And he went back to Russia, even though he had asylum in the West. So while it's sad he's dead (and it took something like three years of prison, probably being regularly tortured most of the time, and held in really shitty conditions the rest) ... what the fuck did he think was going to happen when he went back to Russia?
They arrested him on the airport tarmac or something didn't they? What was his plan? That the West would be so outraged they'd invade? That the Russian people would rise up and free him? I can admire courage, and even admire someone with a dream or a vision of a better world. But what did he think was going to happen?
Because what has happened is pretty much what was, by far, the most likely outcome. It's only really surprising Russia didn't execute him on the spot.
It's not like he didn't know -- but that's exactly what makes his return such a powerful message. He believed so strongly that Russia could be better that he was willing to lay down his own life for it.
As far as I understand up until this point it has been relatively uncommon for political opponents to actually die in prison. This is from the Washington Post coverage:
On returning to Russia: if he fled to the West, he would’ve been discredited as an opposition figure to Putin, branded as a NATO/American/whatever stooge. Plus he still would’ve been vulnerable to SVR assassinations (cf. the Skripal poisonings).
On not being executed upon return: Russia still has to maintain the facade of a democratic regime. On the spot executions don’t exactly comport well with that. So it isn’t surprising at all that they waited a few years until he was out of the spotlight and in a remote prison.