Alexei Navalny

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, IPA; 4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024) was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist and a political prisoner.

He organised anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, and against President Vladimir Putin and his government. Navalny was a Russian Opposition Coordination Council member. He was the leader of the Russia of the Future party and founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights.

As of 2021, Navalny had more than six million YouTube subscribers; through his social media channels, he and his team have published material about corruption in Russia, organised political demonstrations and promoted his campaigns. In a 2011 radio interview, he described Russia's ruling party, United Russia, as a "party of crooks and thieves", which became a popular epithet. Navalny and the FBK have published investigations detailing alleged corruption by high-ranking Russian officials and their associates.

In July 2013, Navalny received a suspended sentence for embezzlement, but was still allowed to run in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election and came in second, with 27% of the vote, outperforming expectations but losing to incumbent mayor Sergey Sobyanin, a Putin appointee. In December 2014, Navalny received another suspended sentence for embezzlement. Both of his criminal cases were widely considered to be politically motivated and intended to bar him from running in future elections. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) later ruled that the cases violated Navalny's right to a fair trial, but the sentences were never overturned. In December 2016, Navalny launched his presidential campaign for the 2018 presidential election but was barred by Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) after registering due to his prior criminal conviction; the Russian Supreme Court subsequently rejected his appeal. In 2017, the documentary He Is Not Dimon to You was released, accusing Dmitry Medvedev, the then prime minister and previous president, of corruption, leading to mass protests. In 2018, Navalny initiated Smart Voting, a tactical voting strategy intended to consolidate the votes of those who oppose United Russia, to the party of seats in elections.

In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised in serious condition after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later. Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service. In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while he was hospitalised in Germany which were imposed as a result of his 2014 conviction. Following his arrest and the release of the documentary Putin's Palace, which accused Putin of corruption, mass protests were held across Russia. In February 2021, his suspended sentence was replaced with a prison sentence of over two and a half years' detention, and his organisations were later designated as extremist and liquidated, including the FBK. In March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial described as a sham by Amnesty International; his appeal was rejected and in June, he was transferred to a high-security prison. In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison on extremism charges meaning he would be released in December 2038. Navalny commented that his sentence is as long as either his life or the life of the political regime in the country.

In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks and then re-emerged in a new arctic circle jail in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died at the age of 47.

Early life and education

Navalny was of Russian and Ukrainian descent. His father was from Zalissia, a former village near the Belarusian border that was relocated due to the Chernobyl disaster in Ivankiv Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Navalny grew up in Obninsk, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) southwest of Moscow, but spent his childhood summers with his grandmother in Ukraine, acquiring proficiency in the Ukrainian language. His parents, Anatoly Navalny and Lyudmila Navalnaya, own a basket-weaving factory, which they ran from 1994, in the village of Kobyakovo, Vologda Oblast. They were still running the factory in 2012.

Navalny graduated from Kalininets secondary school (level 3 according to the ISCED) in 1993. He graduated from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in 1998 with a law degree. He then studied securities and exchanges at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, graduating in 2001. He received a scholarship to the Yale World Fellows program at Yale University in 2010.