Navalny’s friends knew he was willing to become a martyr if that’s what it took to stand up to Putin.
Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.
Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.
Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.
Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.
Navalny was xenophobic. You can’t replace far-right with another far-right, it will still be worse.
The only option is to pick someone who is inclusive of multiculturalism and LGBT people.
There is small problems with “inclusive of multiculturalism” part: namely Bashkirs, Buryats, Yakuts, Udmurts and others. Russia IS multicultural.
24 years of “not getting worse”. Oligarch’s yachts are not getting worse for sure, but what about citizens?
American “left” says they will ask for partial debt relief maybe eventually, while Russian right demands increase funding of education, healthcare, social welfare and scientific research, tenfolding wages of teachres, doctors, feldshers, nurses, peofessors and public transit drivers. Along with providing students food, housing, decent stipend, decent pension for retired and more because if state can afford to pay endless hoard of polizai it sure can pay all mentioned before. And always-present anti-corruption stance because he was investigating it for last 10 years.
His presidency campaign also had redusing presidency term back to 4 years, full transition from conscript army to contract army, declassifying everything FSB did and lustrations, reducing president’s power, increasing parlament power, nationalization of assets of oligarchs that participated in loan auction or corruption.
Finally stopping paying Kadirov, returning army from Syria and other far-right isolatioanism stuff.
He also believed Crimea should be Russian, so I’m not happy he is dead but I’m sure as hell happy that he is not Putin’s replacement.
This is a mischaracterization of his statements and lacks nuance.
You can read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/world/europe/navalnys-comments-on-crimea-ignite-russian-twittersphere.html
“I think that despite the fact that the Crimea was seized with outrageous violations of all international norms, nevertheless, the realities are such that Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation,”
Seems pretty clear.
Crimea is and will be always Ukraine.