The Killing of Alexei Navalny: A New Era of Repression and the Future of Russia
On February 17th, Alexei Navalny, a notable member of the Russian opposition party and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime, was pronounced dead by Russian authorities while imprisoned in the Polar Wolf penal colony. He had been sentenced to a total of over 27 years in the maximum security Arctic prison on what many considered to be falsified charges of fraud, embezzlement, and extremism. His death was condemned by numerous world leaders as an affront to the freedom of the press and referenced by NATO allies as yet another example of Putin’s reckless, authoritarian tendencies to repress political dissent.
Upon hearing the news of his death, sympathizers, protestors, and mourners took to the streets to protest, but were met with riot police. Thousands attended his funeral and chanted various anti-Putin slogans. U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged the American government was still conducting an assessment but quickly blamed the Kremlin for his death, citing the suspicious circumstances around the incident and Putin’s long history of repression against dissenters.
Navalny’s History of Advocacy and Punishment
As the face of Putin’s opposition, Navalny had been a frequent victim of harassment and intimidation by the Russian government since he became involved in politics. He gained prominence as an ardent critic of the existing regime through his popular online blog “RosPil” where he published stories exposing corruption, highlighting financial embezzlement by the state, and criticizing Russia’s later invasion of Ukraine. In 2011, he founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Russia’s largest group dedicated to fighting government abuses. The government is criticized for stifling opposition through propaganda, arbitrary imprisonment, and even covert assassinations. Seeing the threat Navalny posed to his power, Putin and his government immediately sought to discredit Navalny’s voice and prevent him from further gaining influence. Russian courts barred Navalny from ever running for political office, banning him during his campaign for the presidency in 2016. His group had also been designated as an “extremist” organization and was subjugated to frequent monitoring, investigations, and potential prosecutions.
In 2020, following his call for protests against the decision to bar him from running, Navalny was attacked by a chemical nerve agent on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He was rushed to a hospital in Berlin, Germany where laboratories from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that he was indeed attacked with a Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok, making the case clear that the Russian government was involved. The chemical agent interrupts the breakdown of acetylcholine in nerve synapses, inducing overstimulation of muscles and lungs, causing involuntary contractions, and ultimately resulting in cardiac and respiratory failure. EU leaders and the United States announced sanctions on Russia following the attack, arguing that such an operation could only be carried out with direct permission from Russia’s president in collaboration with the FSB, the direct successor organization of the USSR’s KGB.
Navalny after being splashed with blinding green dye at a protest in 2017
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons via Evgeny Feldman
Navalny was arrested for the final time in 2021 on his flight back to Russia from Germany. He announced the decision to return home despite the significant odds of arrest because he believed the stakes for Russia’s future were far too great to be ignored. He was sentenced to additional imprisonment in 2022 and was transferred to the infamous Polar Wolf prison facility in the Arctic Yamal Peninsula of Siberia. The prison is known for the torture of inmates and long Summer days with barely any time where the sun is not out. There, he grappled with significant abuse by prison guards, insufficient health resources, and years of solitary confinement. Prison staff announced that he had simply dropped dead during a prison walk. They later claimed an autopsy pointed to “sudden death syndrome” as the cause of his death, an umbrella diagnosis for an asymptomatic condition leading to unforeseeable sudden death. His mother and spouse fought authorities for weeks before being allowed to see his body, contingent on their promise to hold only a small funeral ceremony.
Russia’s History of Repression
Lubyanka Building in Moscow, the former headquarters of the KGB
Wikimedia Commons via David Broad
Navalny is far from the first critic to experience stiff oppression from the Russian government. Many of the current tactics utilized by Russia’s government were developed and perfected during the Soviet era as the preceding USSR regime solidified its power by stifling political opposition and any form of political dissent. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union actively suppressed dissenting political ideas within the country, using agencies like the KGB to enforce its power and crush revolutions such as the Prague Spring in 1968. Putin himself served as the director of the FSB – the successor agency to the KGB – before becoming president, and thus is well-versed in the strategies used by the state security service to sabotage rivals.
Under Putin, Russia has frequently detained and even assassinated those who oppose his leadership. For example, Ravil Maganov, owner of the Russian oil company Lukoil suspiciously “jumped out” of a hospital window in 2022 while Bill Bowder, a British-American foreign portfolio investor in Russia, was convicted in absentia for tax fraud in Russia in what international leaders claimed was a politically motivated case. Most recently, the Russian leader of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin died when his private jet mysteriously crashed a hundred miles north of Moscow in 2023. Two months earlier, Prigozhin had attempted an armed rebellion against the Kremlin for its treatment of mercenary troops on the front lines of the Ukraine War. The substantial history of these incidents demonstrates Putin’s willingness to silence opposition if he feels significantly threatened.
Navalny’s Death and Putin’s Recent Election
Navalny’s ultimate fate and the government’s handling of its aftermath indicate a recent trend within Russian domestic politics. Internal dissent has sharply increased since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Many Russians are becoming doubtful of Putin’s decision to invade their neighbor and wary of his overstayed tenure as the country’s leader. He has, after all, remained in power for 24 years, and a constitutional amendment adopted in the year 2020 could potentially allow him to stay in power until 2036. Over 20,000 protesters have been arrested since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and more than 500,000 Russians have left the country in recent years.
Considering the increasing political tensions, the timing of Navalny’s death is not a coincidence. The following Russian elections were held in March, and Putin demonstrated his desire to solidify his power and grip over the government. The Kremlin put extensive resources towards suppressing candidates that posed a legitimate threat to the Russian oligarchy. Members of the opposition in the Russian parliament were arrested in connection to protests following Nevalny’s death, and United Russia, the ruling party that Putin controls, maintains a close grip on the election process to rig any result in Putin’s favor. Candidates with conflicting, progressive views are frequently censored and barred from participating in elections. For example, the Kremlin banned up-and-coming antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin from running for president after he expressed his intent to withdraw from Ukraine, citing “irregularities” in his ballot signatures. The three main opposition candidates still running when the election ended were handpicked by Putin’s government and were not serious about winning. Navalny’s killing is likely meant as a shot across the bow to opposition groups hoping to win the election or at least create competition for Putin’s resilient rule.
The Future of Russia
Putin’s political stakes are high. He has made it his mission to restore Russia to its former glory as a global superpower and an antithesis to Western countries. Some believe he longs to re-annex lands belonging to the former Soviet Union and reposition Russia at the head of a new international order.
Navalny’s passing has emboldened and unified opposition movements in light of the coming election. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has taken the helm on his social media networks and has met with U.S. President Joe Biden as well as some EU leaders. She encouraged protests on the March 17th election day to show Russian officials that the movement will not wither away in the face of adversity. Her call to action, posted on the social media platform X, is likely to galvanize the fractured political parties, those who oppose the war in Ukraine, and the thousands who continue to pay tribute to Navalny at his burial site.
Putin is facing rising unpopularity, and so his ability to shape the future of Russia to his desires will be determined not by a democratic process, but instead by his guile during the election process and authoritarian ability to suppress dissent. Navalny’s tragic death will inspire others to take the helm in steering Russia towards a better future. As Alexei Navalny asserted firmly in his final video message, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”
Photo Credit: Flickr via Michał Siergiejevicz