Alexey Navalny: An archenemy Putin wouldn’t name and Kremlin couldn’t scare
Al Jazeera
Navalny was Putin’s fiercest political opponent, using the street and the internet to expose secret palaces and to galvanise Russians who otherwise saw no alternative to the president.
Alexey Navalny, who churned out muckraking exposes of corruption in the Kremlin and led protests that propelled him to YouTube stardom – and the nearly lethal position of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political nemesis – has died in a remote penal colony, prison authorities say.
He was 47 and died on Friday in IK-3, one of Russia’s northernmost prisons.
The lawyer and securities expert, who used to live with his wife, Yulia, and two children, Daria and Zahar, in a drab concrete high-rise in southeastern Moscow, rose to fame in the late 2000s by exposing the graft of top officials, including Putin.
“Putin is the man who steals Russia’s future. I am taking part in this election to fight him,” Navalny said in 2017 when announcing his decision to run for president.
“Under [Russia’s first democratically elected president, Boris] Yeltsin, corruption was problematic. Under Putin, it became systemic,” he wrote in 2012.
