Alexei Navalny: The only man Putin refused to mention by name, who never gave up the fight against the corrupt regime in Russia | world News

Alexei Navalny lived and died fighting against Vladimir Putin's regime and the corruption at its heart.

In 2018, he was banned from running in elections, and remains Putin's most powerful political opponent.

He was the only man capable of bringing tens of thousands to the streets demanding a Russia without Putin — and the only man the Russian president refused to mention by name.

Follow the live broadcast: Putin critic 'felt unwell after walking'

He was stubborn, sarcastic and exceptionally charismatic – a natural populist with a sense of humor that particularly appealed to young people.

His YouTube investigations into Putin's friends and, finally, the president himself, have racked up millions of views and exposed corruption at the highest levels. He has gained stronger enemies than ever before.

For a decade, Mr. Navalny The Kremlin has forgiven. He endured an endless series of arrests, court appearances and detention periods, but he survived.

In August 2020, that changed.

Watch a special program about Navalny's death at 9pm on Sky News

He was poisoned while on a fact-finding mission

The economic situation was deteriorating and discontent, exacerbated by the epidemic, was growing.

Besides, the Kremlin was eyeing parliamentary elections the following year, which Navalny vowed to disrupt through an alternative voting system.

In a hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, during a fact-finding mission for one of his investigations, Navalny was poisoned.

Groans recorded by a passenger on a flight back to Moscow were the first indication that something had gone terribly wrong.

Moments later, he fell into a coma.

He later said the pilot saved his life, making an emergency landing despite bomb warnings at the airport and paramedics immediately giving him the antidote atropine on the tarmac.

Navalny's wife, Yulia, tried for three days to fly him to Berlin, and finally made a direct appeal to… Mr. PutinWhile doctors in Omsk, where he was hospitalized, were hesitant about the diagnosis.

Once in Berlin, a German military laboratory identified the poison in question. It was Novichok, the weapons-grade nerve agent used two years ago against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

Once again – a banned chemical weapon – and an attack that bears 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 that Navalny may have poisoned himself.

Putin ignored the accusations and returned to a familiar topic, which is that Navalny was an agent of the West.

“Who needs it anyway?” the Russian president said at his annual press conference.

“if [they] “If they wanted to, they probably would have finished it.”

Under the care of doctors at Berlin's Charite hospital, 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 to investigative work also by Bellingcat and its Russian partners, he was able to establish the identities of the six intelligence officers who poisoned him – and was even able to convince one of them that the poison had been put in his underwear.

After recovering, Navalny stunned the world by saying he would return to Russia.

He posted on Instagram: “Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, and I miss them.”

He knew what was in store. He was arrested at passport control on charges of violating parole and placed in pretrial detention.

Read more:
A poisoned, imprisoned, mysterious fall from the windows: what happened to Putin's most vocal critic?

Two days later, his investigation into Putin's palace went viral. Within weeks it had been viewed more than 100 million times.

Navalny, a lawyer, did not face due process against a host of politically motivated prosecutions — but he never gave up. He asked people not to give up either.

“I'm fighting the best I can,” he said in a court session. “And I will continue to do so, even though I am now under the control of people who like to disfigure everything with chemical weapons.

“My life is not worth two cents, but I will do everything I can until the law prevails. I applaud all the honest people across the country who are not afraid and taking to the streets.”

Tens of thousands demonstrated in cities across the country – the largest unlicensed protests in Putin's Russia.

More than 10,000 people were arrested. But these will be the last large-scale protests that Russia will witness.

Constant rotation through solitary confinement

When Putin invaded Ukraine, Navalny called on people from his prison 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 the majority of Russians, who feared Putin's two-decade rule.

The Kremlin has brought new accusations of extremism and terrorism against him, including, absurdly, Nazi rehabilitation.

In August 2023, he was sentenced to another 19 years in a special penal system, for the worst offenders.

It was effectively a death sentence. With constant rotations in solitary confinement, Mr. Navalny's health deteriorated.

He died in prison Being only 47 years old is another terrible stain on the conscience of the Russian state.