Simon Bourtembourg with Guillaume Dominguez / Photo credits: HANDOUT / MOSCOW CITY COURT PRESS SERVICE / AFP
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08:27, February 17, 2024
Alexeï Navalny, number 1 enemy of the Kremlin, died in prison, Russian agencies announced this Friday. But who was this opponent of Vladimir Putin, locked up for three years in a 6m2 jail?
Alexeï Navalny, number 1 enemy of the Kremlin, died in prison, Russian agencies announced this Friday. This opponent of Vladimir Putin had been locked up for three years in a 6m2 jail. Who was this man who became the symbol of opposition to the leader of the Kremlin?
A life-size replica of Alexeï Navalny’s isolation cell was presented in March 2023 in the center of Paris by his supporters. It is in a 6m2 jail that the Kremlin’s number 1 enemy has been locked up for three years. The reason ? Failure to comply with a judicial review linked to an old conviction. Who was this man who became the symbol of opposition to Vladimir Putin?
The symbol of opposition to Vladimir Putin
A charismatic blue-eyed colossus, Alexeï Navalny has fiercely denounced and documented the large-scale corruption of Russian power for nearly 15 years. His fight had met with a certain echo in society. In 2011, he managed to bring together more than 100,000 people in the streets of Moscow. Alexei Navalny, however, remains tolerated by those in power and even ran for the 2018 presidential election before being declared ineligible. Having become cumbersome, the FSB condemned him in August 2020. The opponent drank poisoned tea before boarding a plane. He survives, rescued urgently in Germany.
Navalny slept in one of the country’s harshest prisons
Back in Russia, Alexeï Navalny commits the crime of lèse-majesté in 2021 with the denunciation of massive and fraudulent enrichment by Vladimir Putin himself. He was then incarcerated in March of the same year at IK-2 prison in Pokrov, one of the harshest in the country. But in June 2022, Alexeï Navalny was transferred to the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo. A high-security establishment that Navalny’s spokesperson describes as “monstrous”, even in a country where “abuse and torture are used against detainees in many prisons”.
In December 2023, he was transferred to penal colony No. 3 in the Russian Arctic.
This Friday, his death in prison was announced by Russian agencies.