Extract from ABC News
Alexei Navalny, who was found dead in prison on Friday, got under the skin of Vladimir Putin like no-one else.
The 47-year-old exposed the so-called "strongman" of Russian politics for what he really was — an authoritarian president fearful of free elections, free speech and a free press.
An insecure man who is terrified of the truth and of justice, who crushes any form of dissent through violence and incarceration.
"He's never participated in any debates or campaigned in an election," Navalny said of Putin during his fateful court hearing in February 2021 that led his long-term imprisonment.
"Murder is the only way he knows how to fight. He'll go down in history as nothing but a poisoner."
Knowing Putin's obsession with his own skewed version of history, Navalny pushed it further in his speech to the court, mocking the president's place in the bastion of great leaders.
"We all remember Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Well, now we'll have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner."
Navalny was referring to an operation conducted by Russia's Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, that nearly cost him his life in August 2020.
Investigative journalism group Bellingcat and Navalny's team exposed the story of how FSB operatives followed the opposition leader around Russia before breaking into his hotel in Siberia and smearing the deadly nerve agent Novichok on the seams of his underpants.
Navalny went into a coma the following day on a flight to Moscow. He only survived because the pilot diverted the plane to Omsk, and he was able to be evacuated to a hospital in Berlin.
Weeks earlier he had been speaking out against the vote on constitutional changes that would allow Putin to stay in power until 2036.
After he recovered, Navalny could've stayed in Germany, an opposition leader in exile at arm's length from Russia's state-sponsored assassins.
Instead, he returned to Moscow in January 2021 knowing he was effectively handing himself into the custody of the people who had just tried to kill him. It was an act of extraordinary courage.
On the day he flew back in to the country in 2021, Navalny's plane was diverted away from Vnukovo airport where hundreds of his supporters and media crews were awaiting him. Again, a fearful Kremlin could not abide any sort of hero's welcome.
After the plane landed at Sheremetyevo airport, Navalny didn't even make it past customs. He was arrested and taken away. Three years later he wrote on social media he felt like he had no choice but to return to the country he loved.
"I don't want to give up either my country or my beliefs," he said.
"I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your beliefs are worth something, you must be willing to stand up for them. And if necessary, make some sacrifices."
During his famous speech to court, Navalny pointed the finger at President Putin as the man behind his poisoning and his arrest, a man that he considered to be a thief and a coward.
"The explanation is one man's hatred and fear — one man hiding in a bunker. I mortally offended him by surviving," he said.
"I survived thanks to good people, thanks to pilots and doctors. And then I committed an even more serious offence: I didn't run and hide.
"Then something truly terrifying happened: I participated in the investigation of my own poisoning, and we proved, in fact, that Putin, using Russia's Federal Security Service, was responsible for this attempted murder.
"And that's driving this thieving little man in his bunker out of his mind. He's simply going insane as a result."
Navalny 'was so many things Putin was not'
Following the announcement of his death, US President Joe Biden made the point that Navalny was poles apart from his nemesis.
"He was so many things that Putin was not," President Biden said.
"He was brave. He was principled. He was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed and where it applied to everybody."
There were other key differences between the two men.
Putin surrounded himself with aging ex-KGB officials and cold war warriors, with yes men and acolytes from his old judo club in St Petersburg.
Navalny was charismatic, outward-looking and inspired young people.
From 2011, when he was heavily involved in protests against election fraud and corruption, he was surrounded by motivated and media savvy volunteers, many of whom had grown up after the collapse of communism.
One of those volunteers, 26-year-old Anna Kovalevskaya, told the ABC that Navalny connected with young people in a way no Russian politician has before.
"That's his legacy, the raising of at least one generation of politically aware and kind people who understand that democracy, truth, freedom of speech is a good thing," she said.
And Navalny had a sense of humour. The day before his death was announced, he appeared in court via video link from prison, joking with the judge about the number of fines he was facing courtesy of the Kremlin controlled courts.
"Your honour, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to 'warm up' my personal account, because I am running out of money," he said.
As the exiled Russian publication Meduza editorialised, "Navalny laughed in the face of evil and never despaired."
There were key differences between Navalny and other Russian opposition politicians as well that made him even more of a threat to Putin.
He was able to inspire street protests like no other political figure. Following his arrest in 2021, tens of thousands of people marched across Russia before the introduction of new laws that further cracked down on dissent.
His Anti-Corruption Foundation exposed Putin and his cronies for running the country like a mafia state and a kleptocracy.
They produced exposés that went straight to YouTube reaching millions of subscribers.
Their most popular film was titled Putin's Palace: History of the World's Largest Bribe, which alleged the president had the most expansive private house in Russia, worth around $US1.3 billion, built on his behalf.
The video alleged the home covered an area close to 18,000 square metres and included a casino, an ice-hockey rink and a church.
Putin dismissed the claims that he owned the palace and described the film as "boring". It was a rare response from the president who normally wouldn't even mention Navalny by name.
Next month, Russia will hold presidential elections that are widely seen as rigged.
In Russia, anyone considered a genuine political threat to Putin is not even allowed on the ballot paper, some are jailed others are killed. Navalny, it appears to many, now fits all three categories.
Luke Harding was the Guardian's Moscow correspondent before he was expelled from the country. He wrote A Very Expensive Poison, a book about the assassination of another Putin critic, Alexander Litvinenko.
He believes Putin is responsible for Navalny's death and that he was deliberately murdered in the lead-up to the election.
"I see this as a piece of housekeeping almost, before the vote, to make sure there are no protests," he told the ABC.
"As Stalin famously said, no, man, no problem.
"Putin appeared in public, in the hours after Navalny's death, and he had a big smile on his face and that tells you everything you need to know."
Navalny now joins Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvineko and other prominent Putin critics who met with untimely deaths.
There is no real hope of getting to the bottom of how he died inside that remote prison colony above the Arctic Circle.
His supporters, many of them exiled, will hope to continue carrying out his work exposing corruption and pushing for democratic reforms in Russia, but that challenge will be immense without their charismatic leader.
Before he was arrested, Navalny left a video message in case he died in prison. In it, he told Russians who believed in a democratic future: "You're not allowed to give up."
That's something you could never accuse Alexei Navalny of.
No comments:
Post a Comment