Alexei Navalny: Who’s the jailed Putin critic some Russians hope might overthrow him?

President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic has been handed a recent jail time period, which might hold him behind bars for one more twenty years.

Russian politician Alexei Navalny was sentenced by a court to 19 years in jail on Friday after being discovered responsible of extremism fees referring to the actions of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).

He is already serving a nine-year time period for numerous fees that he claims are politically motivated.

Since rising to prominence as an opposition determine within the early 2000s, Navalny has beforehand been convicted of defying authorities officers, embezzlement, fraud, parole violations and contempt of court docket.

The basis he arrange in 2011 has sought to discredit Putin and his associates by way of well-produced on-line investigative documentaries that declare to reveal their opulent life.

His persistent on-line campaigning has gained him a community of loyal followers each in and out of doors Russia.

It has additionally seen him repeatedly jailed, barred from operating for political workplace and most famously poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent in 2020.

Here we have a look at how the largest thorn within the Kremlin’s aspect bought to the place he’s now.

Ukrainian heritage

Alexei Navalny was born to manufacturing unit homeowners in a village west of Moscow known as Butyn in 1976, however grew up within the city of Obninsk, round 60 miles southwest of the Russian capital.

He is Ukrainian on his paternal aspect and spent summers along with his Ukrainian grandmother within the city close to Chernobyl the place his household are from.

Navalny, now 47, cites the mistreatment of locals after the 1986 nuclear catastrophe as one of many causes he first sought to tackle the Moscow regime.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Navalny graduated with a legislation diploma from Moscow’s Peoples’ Friendship University in 1998 earlier than gaining a second in economics in 2001.

It was round this time that Vladimir Putin rose to energy supported by a circle of oligarchs that purchased up state-owned corporations and sponsored his United Russia celebration.

Anti-corruption basis

To start with, Navalny expressed nationalist and anti-immigrant views. His give attention to authorities corruption has largely clouded earlier feedback about Muslims in Russia, however in 2021 Amnesty International retracted his ‘prisoner of acutely aware’ standing after he didn’t distance himself from them.

He joined the liberal Yabloko opposition celebration in 2000 however was expelled for “nationalist activities” in 2007.

While working as a lawyer within the early 2000s, Navalny began running a blog, with the preliminary purpose of protesting in opposition to rampant overdevelopment in Moscow.

As the years glided by and Putin’s grip on energy tightened, his campaigns honed in on corruption of state-run organisations corresponding to gasoline and oil giants Gazprom and Rosneft.

He purchased small shares within the corporations together with some state-owned banks so he might ask awkward questions on their funding at AGMs.

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In 2010 he based RosPil, an anti-corruption venture run by legal professionals that monitored the spending of state-run organisations and enabled them to carry a number of instances of suspected violations to court docket.

A 12 months later in 2011 he established his most important Anti-Corruption Foundation, which now has hundreds of thousands of followers worldwide by way of its numerous social media channels.

In December that 12 months following widespread stories Russia’s parliamentary elections had been rigged, 1000’s gathered in Moscow to contest the outcome.

Navalny was the primary of round 300 folks to be arrested. He was jailed for 15 days for “defying a government official”.

With Putin re-elected and Navalny gaining notoriety, fees in opposition to the opposition chief started to stack up. One of the primary in 2012 was for embezzlement of the state-owned timber firm Kirovles.

Mayor of Moscow bid

In 2013 he ran to be mayor of Moscow, coming second with 27% of the vote and receiving round 97.3 million rubles (£2.3m) in marketing campaign funding.

In a separate case involving the Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics firm Yves Rocher, Navalny was positioned beneath home arrest and banned from utilizing the web in 2014. His group continued to replace his weblog for him.

Eventually he was handed a three-and-a-half 12 months jail suspended jail sentence – however his brother Oleg was jailed.

In late-2015 FBK’s first long-form investigation was launched. The YouTube documentary ‘Chaika’ accused then-Russian prosecutor General Yury Chaika of corruption and ties to a infamous prison group – and obtained 26 million views.

A 12 months later Navalny introduced his intention to run within the 2018 presidential elections, however he was finally barred from standing over the end result of the Kirovles embezzlement case, bringing condemnation from the EU and wider worldwide neighborhood.

Another YouTube documentary, this time on former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and his alleged empire of palaces, was launched by Navalny and his group in March 2017, racking up seven million views in its first week.

It triggered rallies all through Russia, subsequent arrests, and Navalny being jailed for organising unauthorised demonstrations.

At one protest, he was attacked with disinfectant by a gaggle of unknown assailants, which broken his proper eye.

Novichok poisoning

It was solely three years in the past that Navalny’s combat in opposition to Putin hit headlines past Russia.

On 20 August 2020, he was travelling again to Moscow from the Siberian metropolis of Tomsk, the place he had been working with native activists, when he fell gravely unwell on the airplane.

The pilot made an emergency touchdown in close by Omsk and Navalny obtained emergency hospital therapy.

His group instantly accused the Kremlin of poisoning him, which it vehemently denied, and he was flown, still in a coma, to Berlin.

After wide-ranging exams, quite a few German medics confirmed he had been poisoned with novichok – the identical Soviet-era nerve agent used to poison former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.

His restoration took 5 months, along with his spouse Yulia, daughter Dasha and son Zakhar, by his bedside.

Despite the chance of arrest, Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021 the place he was instantly detained for allegedly violating the phrases of his suspended sentence from the Yves Rocher case.

Fresh wave of anti-Putin protests

News of his arrest triggered a number of the greatest protests in Russia since Putin’s rise to energy and resulted in 1000’s of demonstrators being arrested themselves.

Navalny was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for the parole violation, however as earlier than, his group supplied updates on him by way of his Twitter and different social media accounts.

Among them was news of a three-week starvation strike, which Navalny stated was as a consequence of sleep deprivation and being refused medical therapy.

In June 2021 a Moscow court docket outlawed his basis and carried out a sequence of raids geared toward shutting down its community. Some group members had been compelled to flee Russia.

Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Navalny used his social media posts and court docket appearances to protest in opposition to the battle. At one listening to he described it as “stupid” and “built on lies”.

A month later at quick discover he was introduced again to court docket and handed one other 9 years for embezzlement and contempt of court docket earlier than being transferred to a maximum-security jail in Vladimir, western Russia.

This hasn’t stopped him and his group relaunching the anti-corruption motion and submitting lawsuits over his therapy in jail, which he claims has seen him compelled to listen to one of Putin speeches on repeat for 100 days in a row.

Despite his group’s considerations about his well being and that he may be being slowly poisoned behind bars, Navalny stays defiant, claiming his dying would solely additional gas the protest motion.

And regardless of his newest sentence, many in Russia view him as a Nelson Mandela-style determine, who they hope can be launched from jail to take over as president when Putin falls.

A documentary about him, which reveals him tricking a chemical weapons skilled into seemingly confessing to poisoning his underwear with Novichok, received an Oscar earlier this 12 months.