The Russian President, Wladimir Putin, During his last 24 years in power, he had several enemies who were eventually murdered or died under strange circumstances. The last person to suffer this fate was Alexei Navalni. The Russian opposition leader died on Friday at the age of 47 in the Arctic prison to which he was transferred last December.
According to the opinion of Samantha BendernFor Navalny, an associate member of the Chatham House organization, Navalny’s death is no surprise. “Boris Nemtsov was shot in front of the Kremlin; Anna Politkovskaya, Putin’s critic and journalist, was shot on Putin’s birthday; Prosecutor Sergei Magnitsky died in a Russian prison, to name just a handful of those who have since died as critics or opponents. “Putin,” he says. And yet: “We are still surprised that Putin’s brutal regime is striking again,” he adds. De Benders
But why now? “Allowing him to die so close to the presidential election raises a number of questions, including whether Putin was so afraid of Navalny’s appeal early in the campaign that he had to be silenced forever,” he says the Chatham House analyst.
“We also have to ask ourselves: Could Navalny’s death backfire and finally bring Russians onto the streets? There were no other high-profile deaths of opposition figures that led to protests. But the current context is different: Russia is at war in Ukraine and a new opposition candidate, Boris Nadezhdinhas created an embryonic pacifist movement in Russia hungry for change.
The Russian opponent Boris Nadezhdinthe only Kremlin candidate opposed to the war in Ukraine confirmed this Saturday the filing of an appeal to the Supreme Court over the election commission’s refusal to register his candidacy.
“An optimistic view is that the death of Navalny can breathe new life into Nadezhdin, whose appeal against the voting ban was rejected by the Central Election Commission on February 15, and spark a real movement.” A pessimistic view would see “Nadezhdin has been silenced , either out of fear or through more radical and potentially permanent methods,” he explains.