Poisoned and banished to an Arctic prison: Navalny, Putin's last opponent

In the IK-3 high-security penitentiary center in Kharp, located in the Russian backwater of Yamalia-Nenetsia, Alexei Navalny's more than 20 years of activism and opposition were extinguished this Friday. It just happened to be a month before the presidential elections.

This is the outcome of a death tacitly announced since the Russian regime imprisoned the lawyer in 2021. Every time his team failed to contact him, they feared the worst. And with good reason. Few thought that "the only major opposition figure" in Russia would finish out his sentence of 30 years in prison.

Navalny goes down in history today as a martyr of the Putin regime. Recognized by the international community, his last months of life are proof of the bloody capacity of the Russian repressive apparatus, which is so sadly exported to countries close to the U.S. borders, such as Venezuela.

Blogger, YouTuber and politician scourge of corruption

The name of Alexei Navalny began to resonate strongly outside the Russian borders around 2010. Before that, the lawyer already had a decade-long political career. He was part of the liberal Yabloko party and served as the regional head in Moscow before his departure.

2011 was a key year in Navalny's timeline. It was an election year in Russia full of suspicions about irregularities in the electoral process. Navalny called out these irregularities on his blog and social networks. His more activist and oppositional side gained strength at this time, when he created his anti-corruption foundation and was arrested for the first time for his political activity that put Putin's government at the center of the Russian state corruption scheme.

Times magazine called him the "Russian Erin Brockovich." BBC called him "the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia." From Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika to Prime Minister Medvedev, no Putin regime official was clean of indictment. It was one man against the state.

Since then, the Russian courts have been constantly pouncing on Navalny to get him sentenced to prison. In 2013, it was for alleged embezzlement and he was sentenced to five years in prison. The European Union slammed his convictions and the persecution of an instrumentalized justice system along with the United States and other international organizations.

Attempted murder with poison

Despite the legal encirclement, the discourse of power in Russia against Navalny was not proactive until 2020. The government and its entourage preferred to publicly ignore Navalny, fostering an image of a residual activist, conspiracy theorist and fascist, even though he ran for election in 2018. This continued until the 2021 parliamentary elections appeared on the horizon, the same year that the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

Power sharpened its tone with its opponent, which paradoxically made him more popular. The media really became interested when he was poisoned and nearly killed. This Novichok attack was not the first. In 2017 and 2019, Navalny denounced chemical attacks, which in the case of the first attack, left him with virtually no sight in his right eye.

The Novichok affair was much more prominent. In the summer of 2020, Navalny was doing opposition work and provided information about the outbreak of protests in Belarus against the government. On the flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the airplane had to make an emergency landing halfway to take the lawyer to the hospital. He suddenly became violently ill. The only thing Navalny had consumed that morning was a cup of tea, so people were suspicious.

Navalny was flown to Germany on a private plane chartered by an international foundation in critical condition. He was treated at the Charité hospital in Berlin. Medical tests suggested Novichok was poisoned. To this day, many people believe that Putin's government was responsible.

Return to Russia and Arctic prison sentence

Russian authorities were not pleased that Navalny returned to Russia. The government intervened in his return flight. He was driven to a Moscow airport where customs agents were waiting to arrest him.

The Russian courts accused Navalny of violating his probation which was imposed following a 2014 conviction. Despite the fact that this sentence was successfully appealed by Navalny before the European Court of Human Rights, Russia ignored that verdict and in early 2021 he was sentenced to prison.

Since then, the Russian justice system has piled sentence after sentence on Navalny. In August 2023, another 19 years were added to his first sentence of 11 years. Despite complaints from the international community, Russia stuck to its goal of burying Navalny under convictions and keeping him as far away from the spotlight as possible.

To do this, they resorted to the old Soviet trick: a prison in the Arctic. In December 2023, after weeks of uncertainty about his whereabouts, it became known that the Russian regime had sent Navalny to the IK-3 penitentiary center in Kharp, in the Yamalia-Nenetsia region.

The opposition leader's closest circle was barely able to contact him. The latest news from Alexei Navalny was optimistic. The man who had challenged Putin joked during his appearances before the judge and about the sub-zero temperatures he was exposed to. Putin managed to eliminate his only opponent.