The Life & Death of Alexei Navalny

Yulia Navalnaya vowed on Monday to continue the work of her late husband Alexei Navalny, and has placed the blame for his death at Vladimir Putin’s feet. Navalnaya has accused Russian authorities of initially hiding her husband’s body to allow traces of poison to disappear. The Kremlin has denied involvement in his death.

Alexei Navalny, born 1976, was a lawyer by training who first started to gain prominence in 2009 for publishing investigations of corruption by state-owned firms such as Gazprom and oil giant Rosneft. As detailed by UK news channel ITV, the past decade of his life has been marked by political activism, with multiple stints in prison under various charges, from embezzlement and fraud to extremism. Navalny was Putin’s most prominent opposition figure domestically and led major anti-government protests across Russia. He survived two suspected poisonings, the first of which was flagged by his doctor in 2019 and the second of which captured international headlines after he fell ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia in 2020 and was soon after taken to Berlin’s Charite hospital to be treated.

In 2023, Navalny was taken to a penal colony in Siberia known as the “Polar Wolf” where he died on February 16, 2024, aged 47.