After Navalny death, who are the remaining Russia dissidents?
Alexei Navalny’s death is a significant blow to opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, but he wasn’t the only person pushing for change in his country.
Navalny, whose death in a remote Arctic penal colony Friday has been blamed on Putin, silenced the most famous internal critic of the Russia leader at the young age of 47.
Here is a look at some of the voices likely to fill the gap in and outside Russia.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation
Navalny built a network of allies through the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which he established in 2011. The group has become Russia’s largest anti-corruption organization.
Allies in the group include top strategist Leonid Volkov, head of investigations Maria Pevchikh, foundation director Ivan Zhdanov and spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, The Associated Press reported.
His allies faced similar pressure and prosecution in Russia, with all leaving the country in recent years to work aboard, the news wire added. Their work included organized protests and a public push for Navalny’s release from prison.
His allies have spoken out in the days following Navalny’s death, with Yarmysh providing detailed updates on the investigation into his death.
Yarmysh insisted in a series of posts over the weekend Navalny was murdered and that the family is demanding the return of his body from investigators. She said Monday it will be another two weeks before Navalny’s body is released.
Zhdanov has also provided updates on social media and revealed Saturday that prison officials told Navalny’s mother he died of “sudden death syndrome” — a general term used to describe various cardiac syndromes that can prompt sudden cardiac arrest and death.
Yulia Navalnaya
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, pledged Monday that she will continue her husband’s work and fight for their country and against Putin.
In a video posted on her husband’s YouTube channel, Navalnaya urged her husband’s followers to join her in taking up his fight and honoring his legacy.
“By killing Alexei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and my soul. But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up,” she said in the video, according to a Google translation of the Russian transcript.
“I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. Continue to fight for our country. And I invite you to stand next to me, to share not only the grief and endless pain that envelops us and does not let go. I ask you to share my rage. Rage and anger towards those who dared to kill our future,” she said.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Khodorkovsky, a 60-year-old former tycoon turned Russian dissident, spent 10 years in prison on charges largely thought to be political after running afoul of Putin.
Upon his release in 2013, Putin offered him a surprise pardon a few months before Sochi’s Winter Olympics, a move seen as an attempt to improve the West’s perception of the Kremlin, The Associated Press noted.
He was flown to Germany and eventually settled in London, where he established Open Russia, an opposition group with its own news outlet. The group endorsed candidates in several elections, offered an educational platform and legal aid to defendants faced with politically motivated prosecutions, the AP reported.
Open Russia and its members often dealt with repeated pressure from Russian authorities, and one of its leaders — Andrei Pivovarov — was sentenced to four years in prison, according to the AP.
The group eventually shuttered, but Khodorkovsky, did not stop his scrutiny of the Kremlin and later formed the Anti-War Committee, an alliance opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Khodorkovsky was quick to pin the blame of Navalny’s death on Putin.
“Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service has announced the death of Alexey Navalny in prison. If this is true, most likely, we will never know for sure what really happened. But regardless, personal responsibility lies squarely with Vladimir Putin, who first ordered his poisoning, and then sent him to prison,” he wrote Friday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Former journalist turned opposition politician Kara-Murza is currently serving 25 years in a Siberian penal colony on charges of treason, the AP reported.
He was an associate of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015 and previously advocated for Washington to impose sanctions on Russians who were considered human rights violators, the news wire added.
He has continued to criticize Putin through opinion columns and letters from behind the bars and has often been placed in solitary confinement. His wife, Evgenia, also advocates for the freedom of her husband and other critics of the Kremlin, per the AP.
Ilya Yashin
Yashin, 40, was a vocal supporter of Navalny’s efforts and refused to leave Russia in the wake of pressure from authorities. He was arrested in June 2022, and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian military, the AP reported.
His associates continue to push out his messages from prison on social media, and his YouTube account has more than 1.5 million subscribers, the news wire added.
The Associated Press contributed.
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