The Navalny Enigma

Although the Putin critic was admired in the west, he was viewed with suspicion at home

- KSENIA KONDRATIEVA,

Alexei Navalny, probably the most famous critic of the Kremlin, died on February 16, in a high-security penal colony nicknamed 'Polar Wolf, located in the Yamalo-Nenets region, north of the Arctic Circle. Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism since August 2023. Before his final incarceration, he had to face several other legal cases, sentences, home arrests and an episode of alleged poisoning in 2020.

Navalny led the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which he set up in 2011. The group was known for its videos on social media on the alleged riches of Russia's top officials and billionaires. Russia designated it as an extremist organisation in 2021 and it was liquidated by the Moscow City Court. In 2022, when Navalny was already in jail, he announced the relaunch of the foundation, now international, with a funding of €50,000 that he got from the Sakharov Prize awarded by the European parliament.

While Navalny was popular across the world, it was different in his home country. His personality and views, his entire political career something that skips the eye of outsiders-turned many people off in Russia. As a Russian journalist noted, He was certainly far more popular and loved abroad than in Russia. Navalny was born in 1976 in the Moscow region to an army officer hailing from Ukraine-a village near Chernobyl-and a lab technician. He got his law degree from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in Moscow, and in 2001, he got a degree in finance from the Finance Academy under the Russian government.

Navalny entered politics in 2000 with the then vibrant, liberal Yabloko party. While at Yabloko, he met several activists who would later become prominent faces of Russian opposition, such as Ilya Yashin and Nikita Belykh. A year later, he was elected to the council of the Moscow branch of the party.