Timeline: Vladimir Putin (and the Kremlin) vs. Alexei Navalny
Alexéi Navalni, a graduate in business law, began in 2007 to buy shares of semi-public companies with the purpose of accessing their accounts and demanding transparency in their management. That same year, he was excluded from the liberal opposition party Yábloko accused of ultranationalist positions. Three years later, from his website, Rospil began tracking corruption cases by analyzing accounts and administrative contracts. In the winter of 2011, the opponent led the protest movement against the legislative elections won by the party in power. The demonstrations reached a scale unprecedented since Putin’s rise to power in 2000.
So, Navalni faced his first prison terms. To combat government corruption, he founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). In July 2013, the opponent was sentenced to five years in jail accused of diverting funds (the so-called Kirovles case). Navalni denounced that it was a political prosecution. On appeal of the conviction, he was granted probation. A couple of months later, in September, he established himself as the leader of the opposition to Putin by winning 27.2% of the vote in the Moscow mayoral elections against outgoing mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who is close to Putin. Two years after that milestone, his formation, the Progress Party, was banned.
In December 2016, Navalni announced his candidacy for the 2018 presidential elections. Half a year after doing so, the electoral commission declared him ineligible due to the conviction in the Kirovles case. Parallel to his political aspirations, Navalni continued to pursue political corruption. In 2017 he published an investigation in which he accused Dmitri Medvedev of leading a real estate empire financed by oligarchs. Again, thousands of people took to the streets throughout the country with plastic ducks, in reference to one of the residences of the politician, faithful to the president.
On August 20, 2020, Navalni was on the verge of death. After being hospitalized in serious condition in Siberia, he was transferred in a coma to Berlin at the request of his relatives. On September 2, Berlin concluded that he was poisoned with a substance similar to Novichok, a neurotoxicant developed for military purposes in the Soviet era. Navalni directly blamed Putin. Moscow called these accusations “unacceptable.” Navalni spent five months recovering from the poison and in early 2021 he decided to return to Russia. He knew that he would be detained as soon as he arrived in his country, which happened as soon as he landed in Moscow, on January 17, and with tens of thousands of supporters demonstrating in support of him.
The opposition group had published information about a palace built by Putin in the Black Sea. The video was viewed by millions of people on YouTube. And the Russian president had to clarify the matter and deny the accusations. On February 2, the court again resorted to the Kirovles case: it changed the probation that had been granted to a sentence of two and a half years in prison. He was transferred to a prison in Pokrov, some 100 kilometers east of Moscow. The protests in support of him did not wait: there were 10,000 arrests. His corruption investigation organization FBK was shut down as “extremist”.
While in Russia Navalni was described as a “terrorist and extremist”; the European Union awarded him, in October 2021, the Sakharov prize for freedom of conscience. In March 2022, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for alleged “fraud” and “disrespect for authority.” He was transferred to the high security prison of Melejovo, about 240 kilometers east of Moscow. From prison he has maintained his criticism of the invasion of Ukraine. The opponent now adds 19 years with the new sentence for “extremism”. The trial was held in the same prison and behind closed doors. Navalni has assured that he expects a “long and Stalinist” sentence. (Afp)
