Tag: Navalny death

A possible Kremlin plot to kill Alexei Navalny, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s leading opposition figure, has sparked widespread rumours of a political murder. A lawyer who became an anti-corruption activist in the late 2000s, Navalny, 47, believed that Putin’s regime was based on cronyism and graft. He was one of the first to be detained during the anti-Putin protests of 2011-12. After his release, he kept challenging Putin, and in 2013, he ran for mayor of Moscow. Despite the lack of media attention and the competition from Putin’s ally Sergey Sobyanin, he won over 27 per cent of the vote but was later banned from running for office. Navalny remained a popular figure in Russia and a respected voice in the West. In 2013, he started his YouTube channel wher...