Poisoned, imprisoned, condemned and died in a “penal colony” in Siberia: Alexeï Navalny paid with his life for his fight against Vladimir Putin. Here are 10 dates of the fight started by the Russian opponent, who died this Friday, February 16 in the Arctic prison where he was serving a 19-year prison sentence, according to the prison services.
2007: shareholder in public companies
A graduate in business law, Alexeï Navalny bought shares in semi-public companies from 2007 to access their accounts and demand their transparency. The same year, he was excluded from the liberal opposition party Yabloko for his ultra-nationalist positions. On his Rospil website, he has been tracking corruption in the administration since 2010.
2011: at the head of anti-Putin demonstrations
In the winter of 2011, he took the lead in the movement to protest the legislative elections won by the ruling party. The rallies are on a scale not seen since Putin came to power in 2000.
He received his first prison sentences and created the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).
July 2013: trial for fraud
He was sentenced to five years in camp on July 18, 2013 for embezzlement of money to the detriment of Kirovles, a logging operation in the Kirov region (west). Denouncing a political trial, he obtained a suspended sentence on appeal.
September 2013: candidate in Moscow
He became the face of the opposition with 27.2% of the votes in the election for Moscow mayor in September 2013 against the outgoing mayor close to Putin. Two years later, his party, the Progress Party, was banned.
2017: Medvedev’s ducks
In an investigation on YouTube, he accuses Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of being the head of a real estate empire financed by oligarchs.
Thousands of demonstrators brandished rubber ducks, in reference to a miniature house that ducks would have in one of Medvedev’s residences.
2018: banned from presidential election
He ran for president in 2018, but the electoral commission declared him ineligible due to his conviction in the Kirovles affair.
August 2020: poisoning
On August 20, 2020, he came close to death. 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 had been poisoned by a “Novichok-type” substance, a neurotoxic product developed for military purposes during the Soviet era. Navalny accuses Putin. “Unacceptable” for Moscow.
January 2021: arrested and imprisoned
Returning to Russia after his convalescence, he was arrested upon landing in Moscow on January 17, 2021. Tens of thousands of sympathizers demonstrated. His entourage divulges a scoop on a palace built by Putin on the shores of the Black Sea. The investigation garners tens of millions of views on YouTube. The president denies.
On February 2, the courts converted his former reprieve for “fraud” into a firm sentence of two and a half years. He was sent to a penal colony 100 kilometers east of Moscow. Demonstrations of support led to 10,000 arrests. His anti-corruption organization FBK is closed for “extremism”.
March 2022: 9 years in prison
On October 20, 2021, he received the Sakharov Prize for defending freedom of thought. In Russia, he joins the list of “terrorists and extremists”. Found guilty of “fraud” and “contempt of court”, he was sentenced on March 22, 2022 to nine years in prison and transferred to a prison 250 kilometers east of Moscow, from where he attacked the invasion of Ukraine.
August 2023: new conviction
On August 4, 2023, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism” and must serve his sentence in a penal colony where conditions are the harshest.
His relatives said on the 11th that they no longer knew where he was. The absence arouses concern in several Western capitals and the UN. On December 25, his spokeswoman announced that he was in the Kharp penal colony, in the Russian Arctic, and that he was “doing well.”