He was poisoned and is now in prison. But that has not stopped Alexei Navalny from calling for anti-war protests in Russia
Alexei Navalny, who is already jailed, told the prosecutor, “Even if you ask for 113 years, you won’t scare me or others like me.” AFP
Critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin are a handful. Speaking up against the autocrat can be life-threating. It means years in prison and possible death. No one knows this better than anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.
Putin’s strongest local critic has been behind bars since last year. And now as the war in Ukraine gets more brutal, Russian prosecutors call for Navalny to serve 13 years in prison.
He faces charges of contempt of court and corruption, and has been put on trial in a prison colony outside Moscow, where is already serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence.
“I request that Navalny be sentenced to a term of 13 years and a subsequent two years of probation,” prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. She also requested “two years of restricted freedom” for Navalny along with a fine of 1.2 million roubles.
But 45-year-old Navalny is not the one who get intimidated. “You can’t put everyone in prison. Even if you ask for 113 years, you won’t scare me or others like me,” he said in court, according to his social media team.
It’s this dissenting spirit that does not go down well with the Kremlin. And it’s exactly why Russia wants to shut him up. But how did 45-year-old Navalny become such a threat to Putin, a man who has been in power since 2000?
Poster boy for dissent
It all started in 2007, when Navalny quit the socialist-democratic party Yabloko to start new political movement – NAROD (National Russian Liberation Movement), which is the Russian word for “people”. He recorded two videos for gun rights and talk about deporting migrants from Russia. In 2008, he supported Russian aggression of Georgian, but has apologised since then. Soon after, he started blogging about alleged corruption at some of Russia’s state-controlled corporations. His star rose, politics evolved, and today he has become the poster boy for dissent in Russia.
The blogger’s anti-corruption videos garner millions of views. He has 2.8 million followers on Twitter and 3.5 million on Instagram, mostly young and impressionable Russians. He and his Anti-Corruption Foundation use social media to their advantage and the constant message they give out is that Putin’s party is “full of crooks” and the Russian president is “sucking the blood out of Russians”.
In January last year, after his arrest, his team published a video that gave viewers a look inside Putin’s palace. It was viewed more than 100 million times, but Kremlin was quick to dismiss it as a “pseudo-investigation”. Yet, it’s clear that the top men feel threatened.
Poisoning Navalny
Moscow has done everything in its power to stop Navalny but the remains unperturbed. In August 2020, he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in Siberia, an attack he blames on Putin.
He repeated the allegation when he appeared in court months later. “His (Putin’s) main gripe with me is that he’ll go down in history as a poisoner,” Navalny told the court. “We had Alexander the Liberator, Yaroslav the Wise, and we will have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner.”
Underpants became a meme in Russia after Navalny carried out a sting in December on a Russian FSB state security agent, who revealed that Novichok had been smeared on Navalny’s underwear, reports BBC.
After the poison attack, the dissident leader was flown to Berlin, where he spent five months recovering. On 17 January 2021, he returned to Moscow, where was arrested on his arrival — a fact he was well aware of since the intentions of Russian authorities were aired on state media. They probably hoped he stayed out of the country because in Russia Navalny means trouble.
But Putin opponent had other plans. He wanted the revolution to continue, even if it was from behind the bars. “…Navalny thinks that his actions can help shape a future Russia. He also believes that, by acting with courage and determination, he can inspire others to set aside their fears,” The New Yorker wrote in an essay about him.
The protest continues from prison
In February 2021, Navalny was given a jail term for violating terms of a suspended sentence for fraud. He went on a hunger strike, speaking up against authorities that refused to give him proper medical aid.
Since then Navalny has been languishing in prison from where he is continuing his anti-Putin campaign in every way that he can. Today, he is encourage Russians to protest against the invasion in Ukraine. In an 11 March post on Instagram, he asked those joining the anti-war campaign to not fear arrests and take to the streets in what he said is “definitely not a futile fight”.
“Mad maniac Putin will most quickly be stopped by the people of Russia now if they oppose the war,” he said in the post. “You need to go to anti-war rallies every weekend, even if it seems that everyone has either left or got scared…You are the backbone of the movement against war and death.”
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Navalny knows the power of the people. And in that he trusts.
With inputs from agencies
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