The Murder of Alexei Navalny -- The Ambition of Vladimir Putin

Alexei Navalny (centre) and Yulia (right) at a march held in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow on 29 February 2020

"A free, peaceful, happy Russia, a beautiful Russia of the future, which my husband dreamed of so much -- that is what we need."

"I want to live in this Russia. I want our children to live in it."

"I want to build it with you [Navalny supporters]."

Yulia Navalnaya, bereaved wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny

"For two years, Ukrainian soldiers have fought for our lands, repelling countless attacks, and liberated roughly half of the [Russian]-occupied territories."

"But this is not a tale about mythical strength and Valhalla. There are losses and injuries. Even wounded soldiers must return to the front -- and they return to a land that will remember every scar on it."

"We are still here. The Russians are still here, standing on foreign land and trying to take more of it."

"The world is still watching."

Anastasiya Nikulina, Ukrainian writer, Lviv, Ukraine

Only a week ago Navalny appeared at a court, appearing fit and healthy, his mood firm, joking and laughing. A day later, he suffered a mysterious calamity while incarcerated in the Arctic penal colony where he is serving 27 remaining years of a 30-year sentence for 'extremism', along with a number of fabricated offences -- his short-lived 47 years suddenly concluded.

 

This was a man whose moral fibre was unbreakable. The second time he was poisoned as a thorn in the side of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin, he was saved from impending death, spirited out of Russia by his supporters where German physicians in Berlin concluded that Novichok, a lethal nerve agent, had been administered to him by stealth. After his recuperation, he challenged Russia by returning, and was speedily arrested as promised.

 

He loved Russia, felt it his home, wanted to rescue it from the thugs determined to emulate the Soviet era, and Putin's desire to install himself permanently as Stalin's born-again successor. Navalny's courage and stalwart insistence that Russia could, should and would be saved from the evil dominating it, the corruption, the violence, the inhumanity and the rapacious grip of its current overlords. 

 

A gangland of corrupt politicians, a Kremlin that concurs with the delirious insistence that Russia's heritage in Ukraine supersedes any sovereignty that Ukrainians insists is their right as a state with its own culture, heritage and values. The hegemonic reach of Vladimir Putin's re-acquisition of a Soviet satellite justified his explanation that Russian-speakers in Ukraine needed to be rescued from the neo-Nazi tentacles of the government in Kyiv.

 

When Russia's prison service shocked, yet did not surprise the world with its announcement of the sudden mysterious demise of Navalny of "sudden death syndrome" at the Polar Wolf prison colony, 1,900 kilometres northeast of Moscow in the Yamalo-Nenets region, Yulia Navalnaya was scheduled to make an appearance at the Munich Security Conference. Suddenly widowed, her acute grief had her question herself about speaking with his death so raw and new.

 

But she did, making an impassioned plea to the audience and to her husband's Russian supporters, that it was incumbent upon them all to help make her husband's dream of a Russia free from Communism, corruption and political coercion. Ukraine's existential struggle to free itself of Moscow's murderous destruction of a sovereign nation unfortunate enough to exist on Russia's border, echoed Yulia Navalnaya's appeal to help effect a different Russia.

 

"I thought, should I stand here before  you or should I go back to my children? And then I thought: what would Alexei have done in my place? And I'm sure that he would have been standing here on this stage", she told her audience. 

Ah yes, Ukraine's plight, defending itself against a rapacious territorial-hungry aggressor utterly lacking conscience, more than willing to sacrifice human lives, both Russian and Ukrainian, and in the process remorselessly destroy towns and cities with their heritage significance; create millions of displaced people and refugees, and plunder the geography of its rightful ownership. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues his dogged canvass of Ukraine's purported democratic allies.

As the first of the dominoes under direct threat of complete absorption by Russia, he endlessly visits capital after capital to speak to their executive branch, to address their parliaments, to relate to them what many are all too aware of; first Ukraine, then the Balkan states, and then an eye from eastern Europe to the western portion. The joint-nations defense forces that is NATO responded with vigour to supply the Ukrainian military with the needed technical hardware to confront the Russian military.

 

A Ukrainian serviceman of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine looks on next to a BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system near a frontline at an undisclosed location in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, February 4, 2024. REUTERS/Alina Smutko

 

War is an expansive and expensive enterprise. Costly armaments, while wreaking wholesale destruction on a country's infrastructure and geography, let alone its lives, must be replaced expeditiously so the tempo of resistance is not lost and in the best-case scenario defense can be transformed into offensive action when supplies are at the ready. But goodwill and the best of intentions are occasionally expendable when two belligerents manage to hold their own.

The dogged courage of a military to defend its homeland against the violent incursion of a neighbour's malicious disregard for human life that impels it to bomb hospitals, schools, energy sources, a wholesale destruction of a nation, terrorizing the population into a state of final weary acceptance that 'normal' will remain in the dictionary, with no real meaning for them for a long time inspires admiration. One dimmed in time in the ennui of an endless war and exhaustive contributions to keep that war going.

At Munich, Denmark stepped into the breach of Washington's insufficient, tardy and reluctant supply of desperately needed weaponry to counter a much larger military's endless supply of arms from those in its thrall. Denmark, at Munich, pledged its "entire artillery" reserves. "They are asking us for ammunition now, artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery", announced Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. 

The European Union too is pushing its defence industry production in hopes of  aiding Ukraine in holding the line against Russia. And in Russia, news of Navalny's death brought mourners out to the city streets in St.Petersburg, and towns and villages east of the Urals. Impromptu monuments of grief, blossomed, and prayers were said for the courageous hero that Navalny represented to Russians living in poverty. Those gathering in 'illegal' assemblies to express their support for a different Russia risked arrest.

People gather outside the Russian embassy, following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reported by prison authorities in Russia's Yamalo-Nenets region where he had been serving his sentence, in Warsaw, Poland, February 16, 2024. Dawid Zuchowicz/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS/File Photo