The death of Alexei Navalny: Does it matter?

Remind me about Navalny…

Meet Alexey Navalny: The 47-year old lawyer-turned-activist ran an organisation called Anti-Corruption Foundation, which has done several anti-corruption exposes on Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. He also led massive protests against the government, starting in 2011. Navalny was repeatedly arrested—and was the target of several attacks—including a suspected poisoning during a prison stint in 2019. Earlier in 2017, he was assaulted with a toxic dye that nearly blinded him in one eye. (Our previous explainer has more on why President Putin was gunning for Navalny.)

The 2021 attack: Unfazed by the terror tactics, Navalny continued to fiercely campaign against Putin—tapping into a tide of anti-Putin sentiment fueled by his mishandling of the pandemic. In August, 2020, the Kremlin executed its most audacious assassination attempt—lacing Navalny’s underwear with the deadly toxin Novochik. But his aides managed to save him—and fly him out to Germany—where he remained in a coma for weeks. Then Navalny did the most unexpected thing. He returned to Russia—despite repeated warnings from Moscow, which even issued an arrest warrant. 

The final arrest: He was arrested the moment he landed in Moscow on January 17, 2021. The authorities also detained Navalny’s wife and brother and raided the offices and residences of his team. In February, he was first sentenced to two years and eight months in a penal colony for violating the probation terms of a previous conviction for fraud. Prosecutors proceeded to slap various other charges—from vandalism to extremism. By the end of the year, he had been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.

So how did Navalny die?

Navalny was first held in a Moscow prison—where his health deteriorated. He complained of being denied medical treatment—and by the end he had spent almost 300 days in solitary confinement. There were reports of him losing sensation in his arms and legs. His aides worried that Navalny was slowly being put to death:

More than a quarter of Mr. Navalny’s incarceration since 2021 was spent in freezing “punishment cells” and he was often denied access to medical care. He was transferred to ever crueler prisons. And at one point, he said he was being given injections but was prevented from finding out what was in the syringes. His team worried he was again being poisoned.

Exiled to a gulag: Towards the end, Navalny was shifted to “the strictest penal colony” in Russia—located above the Arctic Circle:

Only those accused of the very worst crimes are sent to IK-3. Nicknamed Polar Wolf, it is located in Yamalo-Nenets region, well above the Arctic Circle. Conditions, needless to say, are very harsh. It is known for a culture of collective punishment and winter temperatures there can go as low as -20C. Inmates have described being punished for the infringements of others by being made to stand outside in the winter without coats. Those who fail to stand still face being doused with cold water.

In other words, he died in an old-fashioned Russian gulag.

The cause of death: Navalny was last filmed at a court hearing on February 15—a day before his death. He seemed in good health and joked with the judge: 

But prison authorities said he suddenly fell unconscious and died after taking a walk in prison. They first claimed he died from a blood clot—now the cause is something they’re calling “sudden death syndrome”—which suggests a heart attack. But they have refused to release the body to the family:

In their statement about his death, the prison authorities said that its causes were “being determined.” Local investigators said that they had begun a “procedural check” into Mr. Navalny’s death. They said “a set of investigative and operative measures is being carried out aimed at establishing all circumstances of the incident.” 

But his family and political aides insist the delay indicates a cover-up. One ally said:

Putin killed Alexei Navalny. How exactly he did it will certainly be exposed, but right now we will observe an endless marathon of lies and playing for time. Putin will do everything to make it impossible to establish what actually happened to Alexei.

Point to note: The claim hardly seems preposterous given the previous assassination attempts against Navalny—and the many Putin critics who have died under suspicious circumstances. Btw, the long list includes a “sausage tycoon”—who fell out of a window in a hotel in Odisha.

The big Q: is why Navalny returned to Russia—despite knowing it would almost certainly result in his death. At the time he said, “I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs.” Also this: “[A]s an activist who thrived on agitation, he feared sinking into irrelevancy in exile.”

Surely, people must be upset…

Here’s the odd thing. When Navalny was first arrested in 2021—tens of thousands of supporters flooded the streets. Those who came out to mourn his death over the weekend numbered in the hundreds. Many of them—around 400—have already been detained. The reason: Since the invasion of Ukraine, public protests have become illegal under harsh anti-free speech laws.

Navalny? Navalny who? The sad truth is that Navalny is more popular in the West than in his own country. For all the outrage expressed by President Biden, one expert bluntly notes:

Navalny did not have any significant political weight in Russia. He had an army of supporters but compared to the overall proportion of the Russian conservative electorate they were, and continue to remain, a minority. 

And many of those who did hear his anti-corruption message were not swayed by it:

Millions of people saw [Navalny’s] videos. Millions of people are very aware of how corrupt their system is. But on a certain level, it doesn’t attach itself to Putin, it doesn’t attach itself to the higher levels of the Russian state, in part because people see it as inevitable — they’re criminals, but they’re our criminals.

Key point to note: Putin is poised to sweep the elections slated to be held in March. Navalny could never have beaten him—even if he had been allowed to run: 

His cause – the fight against corruption – was always more popular than Navalny himself. His approval rating peaked at 20% in September 2020, just after he was poisoned, but over the years most Russians consistently disapproved of his activities.

Point to note: In the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion—and return of Cold War politics—Navalny is also associated with the enemy. A young Muscovite told Reuters: "But you in the West paint him as someone he was not. The West is not our friend—you are fighting against us in Ukraine." 

Sending a message: If Putin did indeed engineer Navalny’s death, it was to send a simple but powerful message: “Navalny’s probable death strengthens a reality Putin has been building in Russia for a while — that there is no alternative to Putin, and that there is no hope and no room for dissent.” It’s the same reason why liberal antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin was blocked from the presidential ballot: 

Nadezhdin stood virtually no chance of winning, but the Kremlin will not tolerate even the slightest show of dissent. “Putin now remains alone,” Kolesnikov said. “He is solus rex, the lonely king. No one can stop him triumphing.”

Or more ominously: “[Putin] is saying: ‘I don’t care who I kill and how many people I kill. I’ll get whatever I want.’”

So his death doesn’t matter at all?

As one Moscow-watcher describes it, Navalny posed an “existential” threat to Putin—if not an electoral one. He represented the idea of another Russia—a very different kind of politics—in a country that values survival over idealism:

The death of Navalny deprives Russia not of a potential future leader, but of a moral alternative. When he returned to Russia in 2021, Navalny knew what awaited him: arrest, trials, and years of detention, with perhaps no prospect of ever regaining his freedom… By coming back to Russia, he nevertheless asserted his legitimacy to set the political agenda—through confronting the regime on the grounds of morality, rather than politics. In doing so, he rejected the basic principle on which the Russian system functions: that individuals prioritise their own personal safety over political rights and moral standards.

An unexpected beneficiary: The only person who may benefit from Navalny’s death is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—whose $60 billion military aid package is stuck in Congress. It may soften the resistance from Republicans—many of whom are now calling for a tougher line on Moscow. FYI: Russia just scored a significant victory—seizing critical territory from Ukraine—indicating the changing tide of fortunes.

The bottomline: What does Navalny’s death mean? Navalny offered this answer—in a documentary on his life:  

Reading list

Vox hits all the angles in this detailed explainer. Carnegie Endowment and ECFR are very good in capturing what Navalny represented—and what was lost when he died. New York Times looks at why he chose to return to an almost certain death. Washington Post takes a sober-eyed look at the importance of Navalny in Russian politics. Atlantic Council is more optimistic about a post-Navalny Russia. Financial Times and Reuters report on the response on the ground. Al Jazeera reminds us that many in the West disliked Navalny—who was also a strong Russian nationalist. We did a Big Story on the poisoning of Navalny—and his arrest.