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Memorial to Alexei Navalny, Russian political opponent, in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin.
Alexei Navalny’s funeral
The Russian opposition leader who died suddenly at an Arctic penal colony earlier this month, will be laid to rest Friday in Moscow — around 6am for you East Coast early birds.
Navalny’s family and colleagues have accused authorities of preventing a wider civil ceremony to honor him. Last week Navalny’s mother said the penal colony threatened to withhold his body entirely unless she promised a private funeral.
Navalny’s wife Yulia, who has sworn to continue her late husband’s work, warned on Wednesday that she didn’t know if the funeral, or the trip across town to the cemetery, would be “peaceful.”
About a thousand people showed up at great risk to their lives, but there's been no major crackdown so far — but we're watching for what's next. This is, after all, the funeral of a man who at his peak was able to bring hundreds of thousands into the streets to decry Vladimir Putin’s party of “crooks and thieves.”
Putin, for his part, has a choice to make: it’s important to nip any protests in the bud, particularly as he heads towards a sham “election” later this month. But as every strongman knows, cracking down too hard risks heightening the symbolic and political power of the event.
Why is Julian Assange in the news again?
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What's left to sanction with Russia and have existing sanctions been effective?
There's very little left to sanction with Russia that the Americans and their allies want to sanction. I mean, you could try to cut off Russian oil exports to, say, India, but no one wants to do that because that would cause a global recession. Food, fertilizer, same thing. At the end of the day, the sanctions that the West can put on Russia without a massive impact to themselves and the world they've already put. But because Biden said there'd be hell to pay if anything happened to Navalny in jail and he's dead now, and it's pretty clear the Russians, the Kremlin killed him. That means they have to sound tough. But ultimately, the only thing that is changing Russian behavior is the provision of significant military support to the Ukrainians, and that is determined by US Congress going forward.
Is Israel preventing humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza?
Certainly that is the case, and they've been very reluctant to allow significant humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. Their view is that a lot of that aid would be taken by Hamas, and there's very limited capacity to stop Hamas from doing it. It's terrorist organization. Most of the rest of the world says, yeah, even if that's the case, you've got a couple of million civilians in Gaza whose homes have been destroyed, who've been displaced, that have no other way to live unless you provide them with support. And in very short order, the principal danger to civilians in Gaza will be humanitarian and will not be the war. That's how bad the humanitarian crisis is getting, even though the war fighting continues to go on.
Why is Julian Assange in the news today?
Well, because he is facing one of his last opportunities to avoid extradition to the United States. He is in the UK right now. He's wanted on almost two dozen criminal charges by the United States in regard to he and his organization putting out classified material and diplomatic cables over ten years ago. Those are serious crimes from the United States. But supporters of Assange are all about, look, this is, you know, putting truth to power and shining a light on massive human rights abuses. And if it wasn't for Assange, people wouldn't know about those abuses. It's kind of the same thing people have been saying about Snowden. There is a massive political debate that we can't finish in 180 seconds, but that's why Assange is in the news. We will see what the high court rules.
That’s it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, on February 20, 2024.
Is Putin on a roll?
Five days ago, Russia’s most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny, dropped dead in a remote Arctic prison. Three days ago, Russian forces in Ukraine scored their first major victory in months, taking the strategic town of Avdiivka. Two days ago, the body of a Russian helicopter pilot who famously defected to Ukraine last year was found shot dead in Spain. One day ago, authorities in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg arrested a US-Russian dual citizen on charges of treason for raising money for Ukraine and attending demonstrations in Los Angeles.
It’s impossible to know if the timing of all of these things was intentional, but taken together the effect is the same: Vladimir Putin’s message to the West is, “I’ll do what I like, and you’ll do nothing about it.”
Is he right? Maybe. Russia’s already under harsh sanctions, and there’s little appetite for tougher ones that would hit, say, Moscow’s globally important energy exports. Certainly not over the arrest or killing of individual opponents.
More interesting will be whether it all affects the Capitol Hill debate over supplying more aid to Ukraine. With no sign of that yet, what will Putin do next?
Understanding Navalny’s legacy inside Russia
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was a uniquely charismatic, fearless, and media-savvy critic of Putin’s regime who will be extremely hard to replace, says GZERO’s Alex Kliment. But as beloved as he was internationally for his fearless stance against the country’s strongman leader within Russia, his appeal was somewhat limited to educated elites.
“There was a poll last year that only about 10% of Russians saw Navalny as someone whose activities they approved of about 40 or 50% said they disapproved him Navalny” Kliment says. “And a quarter of Russians had never even heard of him.”In 2020, recall, he was poisoned with a nerve agent in an attack that he blamed on the Kremlin. He later, on camera, tricked a Russian security official into appearing to admit responsibility for the hit.
That may be hard to believe for Western observers who have grown accustomed to grainy videos of Navalny defiantly smiling from behind bars. But it’s a function, Kliment says, of the fact that the Kremlin controls the media. The Kremlin has cracked down on opposition movements like Navalny’s, and many Russians who would be most likely to support him have left Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
- Navalny's death is a huge loss for democracy - NATO's Mircea Geona ›
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- Putin's gulag gamble with Navalny ›
- “A film is a weapon on time delay” — an interview with “Navalny” director Daniel Roher ›
- Putin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison ›
- Tracking anti-Navalny bot armies - GZERO Media ›
A person lights a candle next to a portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the monument to the victims of political repressions following Navalny's death, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Feb. 16, 2024.
Navalny’s death: Five things to know
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most charismatic and outspoken opposition leader, has reportedly died in prison, where he was serving a decades-long sentence for extremism.
His death is on Vladimir Putin. Did Navalny die, or was he killed? We will of course never know. The Kremlin says he fell ill after a walk. He had been imprisoned in extremely harsh conditions on charges widely regarded as political. His lawyers have repeatedly drawn attention to threats to his health, which was the Russian prison system’s responsibility. Still, yesterday he appeared well enough in a court appearance by video link, cracking his characteristically dark jokes about how the “conditions are good.”
In 2020, recall, he was poisoned with a nerve agent in an attack that he blamed on the Kremlin. He later, on camera, tricked a Russian security official into appearing to admit responsibility for the hit.
His death is likely to make much bigger waves outside of Russia than inside it. The Kremlin’s control over media, repression of the opposition, and the self-imposed exile of many of Navalny’s biggest supporters since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 mean that within Russia he is not a widely supported or popular figure. A survey taken last year showed just 9% of Russians approved of Navalny’s activities, while nearly 60% disapproved, and a quarter didn’t know who he was. Putin, of course, enjoys to enjoy approval ratings in the 80s.
Still, for Putin and those around him, Navalny was seen as a persistent liability: a charismatic leader who combined a strong dose of nationalism with a laser focus on the corruption that pervades all aspects of the Russian system. At the peak of his influence, more than a decade ago, Navalny was able to get hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to decry the ruling party of “crooks and thieves.”
Western governments will react with statements of outrage, but it’s not clear what else they can do to punish Putin. Russia is already under the stiffest sanctions the West can reasonably muster, given Western capitals’ understandable reluctance to rattle global energy markets with direct sanctions on Russia’s most lucrative oil and gas exports.
That said, keep an eye on Congress. Navalny’s death could reshape the deadlocked debate over providing more aid to Ukraine. Although Navalny’s death itself is not directly related to the Ukraine war, Kyiv’s supporters can now more readily portray opposition to aid as appeasement of a murderous dictator.
Putin personally, it is worth noting, is not a popular figure in the US. Although many Americans, particularly on the right, share his conservative nationalist worldview and his preference for cutting US aid to Kyiv, only 10% of Americans say he specifically does “the right thing” in global affairs. The death of Navanly will make an association with Putin specifically even more toxic.
In the long run, who really loses? Russians. Navalny’s death leaves the already-enfeebled Russian opposition without a uniquely gifted, fearless, and media-savvy leader. Navalny, for all his faults – and we got into those in our interview with the director of the documentary Navalny here – was genuinely committed to a less corrupt, more democratic, and more humane Russia.
His death puts that future significantly further out of reach.
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is seen here at a rally to mark the 5th anniversary of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov's murder, in Moscow, Russia on Feb. 29, 2020.
Putin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison
News broke early Friday that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny – a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin – has died in prison. “On 16.02.24 in the correctional colony number three, convict Navalny felt ill after a walk almost immediately losing consciousness,” the Federal Penitentiary Service for Yamal said in a statement, noting that emergency services were unable to revive him.
Navalny, a social media-savvy activist who led an anti-corruption protest movement of hundreds of thousands against Putin a decade ago, was poisoned with a nerve agent in Siberia in 2020 – an attack he blamed on the Kremlin – and flown to Germany for treatment. He later defied the Kremlin and returned to Russia, where he was promptly sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud and other charges.
In August, a court dumped another 19 years onto his sentence for good measure, and in December, he went missing in the prison system for weeks amid concerns that he was being moved to an even harsher prison.
For more about the opposition leader’s life, check out GZERO’s interview with director Daniel Roher about his Oscar-winning documentary “Navalny,” starring the man himself.
- Vanished in Russia ›
- Why opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Russia after poisoning ›
- “A film is a weapon on time delay” — an interview with “Navalny” director Daniel Roher ›
- Santa's newest neighbor: Navalny's Arctic transfer aims to ice out opposition ›
- Putin’s nemesis ›
- Putin's gulag gamble with Navalny ›
- What happens if Alexei Navalny dies? ›
- Navalny's death is a huge loss for democracy - NATO's Mircea Geona - GZERO Media ›
- Alexei Navalny's death: A deep tragedy for Russia - GZERO Media ›
- Navalny's death is a message to the West - GZERO Media ›
- Understanding Navalny’s legacy inside Russia - GZERO Media ›
Russian lawyer and blogger Alexei Navalny speaks during an interview with Reuters
Santa's newest neighbor: Navalny's Arctic transfer aims to ice out opposition
The transfer to the Stalin-era labor camp is seen as an additional attempt by the Kremlin to limit any possible impact that Navalny might have on the upcoming Russian presidential elections in March 2024.
As a reminder, Navalny is already serving a decades-long prison sentence on extremism charges that he and his supporters say are trumped up.
But that hasn’t stopped Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation from coming up with clever ways to try to undermine Putin’s dominance. The foundation subverted Kremlin censorship by paying for billboards in major Russian cities that ostensibly wished people a “Happy New Year,” but contained a QR code that led to a “Russia without Putin” website, urging voters to oppose the president on election day.
Although the charismatic and social-media savvy Navalny is Putin’s most prominent challenger, he is not broadly popular in Russia, where a majority of those polled say they disapprove of his activities. Still, the Kremlin’s decision to shunt him all the way up to the Arctic shows that Putin appears not to want to take any chances at all.
For more on this story, see our interview with the Oscar-winning director of Navalny, in which Navalny alleges that the Kremlin tried to kill him in 2021.Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Could Alexei Navalny be traded for a killer?
According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s name has come up in possible prisoner-swap scenarios between Russia, Germany, and the US.
At the moment, two US citizens are jailed in Russia on what the US says are bogus charges: US marine veteran Paul Whelan, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Meanwhile, Russia has long sought the extradition of a Russian government hitman, Vadim Krasikov, who was jailed for life in Germany after murdering an alleged Chechen rebel in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019.
Germany has been reluctant to surrender Krasikov, but Russia’s insistence could reportedly open the way for a broader deal that could involve Whelan, Gershkovich, or even Navalny.
If so, it would raise some interesting questions. Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, has been in solitary confinement for nearly two years. He was jailed after returning to Russia following a brief stay in Germany, where he was sent to recover from what was almost certainly an attempt by Russian agents to poison him to death.
Would Navalny even want to be released if it meant going into exile? Not that he’d be asked his opinion on the matter, but Navalny — who is well known in the West but supported only by a small sliver of well-educated Russians at home — staked a lot on the brave act of returning to a Russia that he knew would jail him on arrival.
In a country where being seen as a political pet of the West is often the kiss of death, extraditing Navalny to Europe in a deal for Krasikov could end up being a win-win for Putin.
For more on this, seeour interview with the director of the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny.