Sylvain Allemand // Credits: AFP 8:00 p.m., February 16, 2024

A figure of opposition to Vladimir Putin's control over Russia, Alexeï Navalny died this Friday in his Siberian prison at the age of 47. In just over 10 years, this trained lawyer has become the bête noire of a Kremlin which has never stopped trying to silence him. 

“In today’s Russia, free spirits are put in the gulag and condemned to death.” It is with these words that Emmanuel Macron reacted to the death of Vladimir Putin's number 1 opponent. Alexeï Navalny died this Friday in his prison located in the Arctic. Convicted of corruption, he was serving a 19-year prison sentence there. A seclusion which had continued to be denounced by international authorities and which showed that the lawyer had become over the years a person to be destroyed in the eyes of the master of the Kremlin. 

A first burst of brilliance in 2011

In December 2011, Vladimir Putin was the prime minister of Dmitri Medvedev under his control. The former KGB agent won, unsurprisingly, the legislative elections easily. For the first time in several years, part of the Russian people decided to organize massive demonstrations to denounce what appeared to be fraudulent elections. It was at this precise moment that Alexeï Navalny emerged from anonymity and achieved his first stroke of brilliance: the creation of the slogan “A Russia without Putin”. An affront that will not go unpunished for long. Navalny will be imprisoned from December 5 before being released later. During this period, part of Russian society fell under the spell of the charismatic opponent.  

A popularity that will earn him, according to his sympathizers, to be sentenced to five years in camp for embezzlement during the summer of 2013. A sentence which will turn into a suspended sentence which will not prevent the new darling from presenting himself in the Moscow municipal elections the same year. During this time, the Navalny campaign increased its attacks against Putin's policies. He ultimately lost the elections in the first round against Sergei Sobyanin, close to the head of the Kremlin, but he officially became Vladimir Putin's number 1 opponent. 

The opponent most feared by Putin 

Despite this defeat in the first round, which could have been reassuring for Vladimir Putin, the head of the Kremlin now wants to eliminate this opposition. The head of state now fears this lawyer who has decided to publicly denounce the corruption put in place by those close to power. “Navalny was someone who commanded admiration and who was not afraid. This worried Putin a lot, who is not as strong as we think,” Hélène Blanc, political scientist and author of the book

Goodbye Poutine, explains to Europe 1.

In addition, the lawyer had targeted one of the few weak points of power in political opinion: corruption. Via his video company, Navalny revealed the compromises of the Kremlin's close entourage. “He showed Russians how corruption was at the heart of Putin's continued power. Moreover, he appealed to young people and that is dangerous for those in power,” adds the expert. 

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Despite Putin's animosity towards him, Navalny announced his candidacy for the 2018 presidential election. He was declared ineligible because of his 2013 conviction. Two years later, the Kremlin's clutches began to tighten more and more. more dangerously on the opponent. He was arrested several times in connection with the organization of demonstrations calling for a boycott of the Russian presidential election. He then serves prison sentences of up to thirty days. 

Target of poisoning 

In August 2020, Navalny was urgently hospitalized. The opponent escapes an attempted Novichok poisoning. Narrowly saved, Alexeï Navalny then accuses Vladimir Putin, while Moscow describes this attack as “unacceptable”. While he was safe in Germany, he decided to return to Russia after his convalescence. “He decided to return to Russia because he was very attached to his native land and he thought that the fight against Putin could not be led from abroad,” says Hélène Blanc. He was arrested upon his arrival at the airport, which provoked demonstrations in the country. Two days later, his relatives published information proving, according to them, that Vladimir Putin has vast financial assets. A revelation that garners millions of views on YouTube. 

It was from this moment that the Kremlin's anger reached a new level. On August 4, 2023, Alexeï Navalny was sentenced to his heaviest sentence: 19 years in prison for “extremism”. On December 25, his spokesperson announced that he had been transferred to the penal colony in the Russian Arctic where he would die.