What happened to Alexei Navalny? Why was the Russian opposition leader in jail?

Alexei Navalny, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political rivals, has died in prison, where he was serving a nineteen-year sentence and has been held in custody since 2021. His death was reported by Russian authorities early on 16 February, and still very little is known about the circumstances.

On 14 February, Navalny’s team posted to X from his account that Russian authorities had sentenced him to fifteen days in a punishment cell for the fourth time in just two months.

In response to hearing the news, Yulia Abrosimova, the wife of the political leader, spoke at the Munich Security Conference, which has brought together leaders from around the world working to support Ukraine’s effort to combat Russia’s aggression.

Navalny leads opposition against Putin

Under Putin, the Russian state has wielded an enormous amount of control to suppress the activities of protesters, and that effort has been intensified in the past year. In early 2021, there was significant public support for Alexey Navalny, the politician and most vocal opponent of Putin in Russian society. To undercut the work of the opposition leader and the 2021 protests against Putin, Navalny’s organizations were designated as extremist groups and removed from the formal political landscape. Navalny himself was imprisoned, where he remains today, and new rules governing social media expression were introduced.

The imprisonment of Alexei Navalny

The imprisonment of Navalny is just one step Putin has taken to sideline his political rivals, and the death of the opposition leader while in custody is a dark stain on the country’s criminal justice system. For years, Navalny and his family had raised concerns about their safety, which were affirmed after an attempt to poison the politician was carried out in 2020. The attempt on his life was made on a flight between Tomsk and Moscow, with the poison used being a nerve agent, which was later confirmed by the five labs certified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

He had to be flown to Germany in September 2020 when he was poisoned with a nerve agent. Upon returning to Russia he was arrested for violating his probation terms, he was in hospital in Germany, for an earlier embezzlement conviction which he says was trumped up. This was one of many attempts to silence the Kremlin’s most prominent critic. Now, nearly four years later, he has been silenced forever, with only his followers able to carry forward his message.