Alekséi Navalni died in a Siberian prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence, after having endured a lengthy legal and medical ordeal. The Kremlin critic chose to return to Russia in 2021 following a poisoning attempt. What impact will the loss of such a charismatic figure have on the country a month before presidential elections?
“I believe his death changes nothing in the Russian political game, because he had already been pushed out of real politics”, says Juanjo Prego, an independent Russia expert, speaking to El Periódico de España of Prensa Ibérica. “From the Arctic prison onward, his tweets and videos only mattered to the circle of navalnists. The opposition has not been able to coordinate around another candidate.”
The only opposition figure who could cast a shadow over Vladimir Putin in the March elections was Boris Nadezhdin. The Supreme Court definitively rejected his candidacy just hours before Navalni’s death became public.
Without a clear opposition
“The key now is whether protests emerge and how large they are. Putin has successfully silenced Navalni in recent months, and the messages his team tried to push through did not reach Russian citizens with strong impact”, notes Eleonora Tafuro, a researcher at the ISPI institute in Milan, in an interview for El Periódico de España. “Navalni built popularity with a message of fighting corruption, not abstract issues, and that resonated with the Russian population. But I don’t think people are ready to take to the streets now to protest his death.”
Navalni highlighted, for example, wealth of allegedly illegal origin attributed to former prime minister Dmitri Medvédev, including foreign property held in the names of frontmen.
He was more than an opponent; he represented a movement, and now the question is who will inherit that mantle. He was never allowed to run in elections, precisely because Putin had detected that strength. The other charismatic opponent, Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015. The list of critics forcibly sidelined from Russian politics is long and brutal.
“With Navalni, a cycle of major opponents closes, one that began with Nemtsov, among others. He was the Kremlin’s last significant rival”, Prego emphasizes.
Circumstances of the death
Spain, through its Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has “urged” the Kremlin to clarify the causes of Navalni’s death.
The Federal Penitentiary Service for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said that “Navalni began to feel unwell during a walk and, almost immediately, collapsed.”
“I don’t know if the Kremlin killed him; it doesn’t make much sense now with elections in March, as that could trigger protests. But his health had been deteriorating due to the attacks he endured over the years”, Tafuro explains. Is this assassination by stealth?
“It is likely the Kremlin decided to remove him from the scene before the elections, when they need everything under control and nothing unexpected to happen”, argues Prego. “Even if it happened from prison, he remained a disturbance.”
Navalni and the Ukraine conflict
“Ukraine always showed disdain for Navalni”, adds the analyst. “He was, after all, a Russian nationalist and, in his youth, closely tied to pan-Russian movements linked to the far right. He never shed that badge over all these years.”
The analyst notes the muted reaction to the occupation of Crimea, though a manifesto published just over a year earlier called for an end to the war and the restoration of the 1991 borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke after Navalni’s death, saying it was “clearly” an assassination by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
[Cited sources and attributions are provided to reflect reporting context and expert opinion.]