January 19, 2022

Navalny’s arrest was a flagrant assault on human rights

topic:	Political violence
located:	Russia
editor:	Andrew Getto

Alexei Navalny’s life story is almost too absurd to believe: in the span of a few months, he was poisoned by a military-grade chemical weapon, awoke from a coma in another country, then prank called his assassins and turned himself in to his sworn enemy. This happened exactly one year ago, on 18 January, 2021, and there is no guarantee that this will not be the end of Navalny’s story. 

Navalny came to prominence as an anti-corruption activist during the 2011-2012 protests, when Vladimir Putin decided to run for president for the third time. In 2013, Navalny took 27 percent of the votes in Moscow’s mayoral election without access to TV time, which is the primary source of information for most voters. By 2017, his YouTube investigations were garnered dozens of millions of views and sparked mass rallies across the country.

Being the most vocal online critic of the Kremlin is already dangerous enough, but in 2018, Navalny decided to challenge Vladimir Putin directly by running for president. His arrest did not allow him to make it to the race, but along the way he created a country-wide network of regional offices: now, every region had their own local Navalny.

Dozens of journalists and political activists have been killed for much less. Navalny was similarly almost eliminated when a team of FSB operatives applied Novichok (a nerve agent) to his underwear during a trip to Siberia. By any account, Navalny should have died; yet after desperate attempts to keep him in the country, the Kremlin gave up and let Navalny's family fly him to Germany for treatment. As he learned how to speak again, he tracked down one of his assassins and called him, making the world laugh at the almighty Russian secret services yet again. After relearning how to walk, he packed his things and flew back to Moscow.

Now Navalny is in prison under baseless pretexts. The prison administration is doing everything to make his life unbearable: regular prisoners aren’t allowed to talk to him, and wherever he goes he is followed by members of the lowest prison caste. The regime retains the option of killing him at any point, as they did with Sergei Magnitsky. 

Officially, the Kremlin has always brushed off Navalny’s activity as marginal and insignificant. In reality, his work has become the biggest catalyst for the Kremlin’s decade-long frantic attempt to clamp down on any opposition. 

Alexei Navalny is feared, and not just by the abstract regime, but personally by Vladimir Putin. He is everything that Putin will never be. Putin spent his whole career conforming to whatever regime he lived under, avoiding any conversation or step that could hurt him, and, of course, stealing money on a scale never before seen in history. 

Navalny, on the contrary, is an open-hearted, fearless man, who rejected safety in the name of his struggle to defeat a corrupt regime. He is modern, furious and sincere - the leader Russia deserves. That is why it is important for the Russians, and for the world, to make sure he lives long enough to open a new chapter - both in his personal tale and his country’s.

Photo by V T

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