Why Alexey Navalny Was Putin’s Domestic Enemy No. 1

Alexey Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, an anti-corruption investigator whose exposés targeted President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle. His detention and subsequent imprisonment in 2021 upon his voluntary return from Germany, where he was recuperating from a nerve-agent attack he blamed on the Kremlin, sparked the biggest unauthorized protests Putin has ever faced. In March 2022, he was convicted in a new case that would have brought his total time in prison to about 12 years. The US and European Union demanded the release of Navalny, who died in prison at age 47.

Navalny fell sick during a walk at the remote maximum-security prison camp in the Arctic where he was last held, and medical staff were unable to revive him, the prison authorities said on Feb. 16. In December, friends and lawyers for Navalny, who’d been previously held in a prison outside Moscow, raised alarm on social media that they had lost contact with him. He later emerged in the Arctic camp, ending nearly three weeks in which his whereabouts were unknown. Western leaders decried Navalny’s death, with many placing responsibility squarely on the Kremlin.