A little more than three months ago, precisely on 4th of June, the Russian activist Alexei Navalny would complete 50 years-old, so this post is a tribute to him. He bravely fought against the dictatorship in Russia. Fighting for democracy, justice, human rights, development and political participation must be a duty for all of us. I have a YouTube channel, here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/@lucianofietto4773/videos. Since the creation of this channel its visualization counter doesn't work, the same has been happening with the counter of this blog since its creation in 2010. Never a human rights defender has had so many rights violated for so long time.This post is a summary of two articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny. The second was published at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/03/alexei-navalny-patriot-russia-books
Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny was a Russian opposition leader, anti-corruption activist and political prisoner. He founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011. He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. Through his social media accounts, Navalny and his team published material about the corruption in Russia, organised political demonstrations and promoted his campaigns. He published investigations detailing alleged corruption by high-ranking Russian officials and their associates. Navalny twice received a suspended sentence for embezzlement, in 2013 and 2014. Both criminal cases have been considered political motivated and intended to bar him from running in future elections. He ran in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election and came in second with 27%, but he was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election. In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised after being poisoned. He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later. He accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated Russian Federal agents. In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while hospitalised in Germany. Following his arrest, mass protests were held across Russia. The next month, Navalny's suspended sentence was replaced of over 2 and half years's detention, and his organisations were later liquidated. In March 2022, he was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement. Following the rejection of his appeal, Navalny was transferred to a high-security prison in June. In August 2023, he received another sentence of 19 years on extremism charges. In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks. He re-emerged in an Artic corrective colony. In 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died.
Alexei Navalny, Russia's leading dissident, died last February, imprisoned in the Article Circle. His posthumously published memoir is an exhilarating read. With an eye on pending tragedy, he lovingly writes of family, doubles down on faith and celebrates the quotidian. Navalny founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011 and he took his opposition to Putin mainstream ywo years later, running for mayor of Moscow. In 2016, Navalny announced a run for presedent, challenging Putin directly, only to see his candidacy barred in 2018. In 2020, he was poisoned. After hospitalization in Germany, he returned to Russia, immediately arrested and exile to a penal colony in the Artic. He died there at the age of 47. On the page, from the grave, Navalny lambasts the war on Ukraine. "Because of Putin, tens of thousands, of Ukrainians and Russians citizens will die. Yes, he'll stop Ukraine from developing, he'll drag it into the swamp, but Russia too will pay a high price." Navalny's scorn is stringent:"We have everything for massive 21st-century development, but we'll again squander the historic opportunity of leading a rich, healthy life as a nation, in exchange for war, filth, lies, and a palace with golden eagles." The Russian government blamed natural causes for Navalny's death. To his supporters, it was an execution ordered from on high. Navalny himself was uncertain that autocracies are destined to fail. China, Cuba and North Korea have outlasted their critics. "We underestimate how resilient authocracies are in the modern world," Navalny writes, "protected as they are from external invasion by the U.N., by the rights of sovereignty. Beyond that, Russia is additionally protected by its membership in the U.N. security council and its nuclear weapons."
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