Factbox: Who is Alexei Navalny and what does he say of Russia, Putin and death?

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, has dropped 8 kg in jail and may have a slow-acting poison, his spokeswoman said.

Navalny who?

Opposition leader

Russia’s fractured opposition’s most prominent politician is Navalny.

He was portrayed as a Russian Nelson Mandela who would be released from prison to govern the country.

In 2021, he returned to Russia from Germany, where he was treated for what Western lab tests showed was a nerve agent poisoning in Siberia.

Gain prominence
A former lawyer, Navalny rose to popularity with blogs which exposed what he believed was enormous corruption across the Russian elite. He thinks Russia is run by “crooks and thieves”.

He joined 2000s Russian nationalist marches. In 2007, the liberal Yabloko opposition party expelled him for his immigration restrictions and nationalist sentiments.

He used the internet and drones to show President Vladimir Putin’s elite’s riches and massive possessions.

After an election compromised by fraud, he was one of the first protest leaders imprisoned.

Navalny has long predicted political upheaval in Russia, perhaps revolution, because Putin has created a fragile system of personal power based on sycophancy and corruption.

The Kremlin’s words?
The Kremlin denies Navalny’s charges of massive corruption and Putin’s wealth. Most of Navalny’s key allies live in Europe because his movement is illegal.

Russian officials call Navalny an extremist CIA puppet who wants to destabilize Russia and make it a client state.

Navalny has been arrested many times for organizing rallies and prosecuted for corruption, embezzlement, and fraud. He claims political motives.

POISONING:

Navalny became unwell on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow in August 2020. The pilot performed an emergency landing, saving Navalny, and he was rushed to Berlin to be treated for a neurotoxic that German military tests identified as Novichok, a Soviet poison.

A collaborative media inquiry found FSB assassins. Putin called the probe a smear: “If someone had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off.”

FAMILY
Navalny, 46, married Yulia. Darya, their daughter, attends Stanford University, and Zakhar, their son, is in school.

NAVALNY QUOTES:

Ukraine War:

“This is a stupid war which your Putin started,” Navalny told a Moscow appeal court in 2022 through video link from a corrective correctional colony. “This war was built on lies.”

“One madman has got his claws into Ukraine and I do not know what he wants to do with it – this crazy thief.”

On Putin:

“Corruption is the foundation of contemporary Russia, it is the foundation of Mr. Putin’s political power,” Navalny told Reuters in 2011.

On Russia:

“The famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy once described Russia’s power structure: ‘the villains who stole their own people came together, enlisted soldiers and judges to defend their orgy, and now they’re having a feast. This amazing sentence perfectly describes our country.”

Fear and ambition:

“Why should I be afraid?” he said in 2011.

He told Reuters, “I would like to be president, but there are no elections in Russia.”

On death:

“If they decide to kill me then it means we are incredibly strong and we need to use that power and not give up,” he told CNN. “We underestimate our strength.”