Navalny represented old-style Russian conservativism, the kind that maintains the divide between the wealthy centres and the impoverished periphery and promotes nationaism. By the low standards of Russian political leadership, though, he was amongst their best just by openly opposing autocracy and kleptocracy
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He led a party whose primary platform was anti immigration. He was an asshole. I don’t celebrate Putin getting away with murdering the opposition but it was shitty opposition.
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Whatever you think of his politics, he was incredibly brave.
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What, all those opposition candidates whose election paperwork had ‘problems’ meaning they were not allowed to stand? They should count themselves lucky, in Putin’s books.
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I’m going to speculate that “having the crap beat out of you causing massive internal bleeding” just might be an “underlying condition,” which might cause blood clots.
edited to add: Really the only surprise is that it took them this long. He had survived an earlier attempt at assassination. Once he was in prison, the real question was when and how, not whether Putin would have him killed.
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Just watched Biden address his death, at one point he got angry for what trump said about NATO, Fox is already replaying his angry response as proof Biden is not fit.
I thought Biden showed great restraint in not saying trump can go f**k hinself. He paused and pulled it back.
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Because after a few days/weeks/hours in a Russian prison, “volunteering” to go to war or a gulag sounds much, much better than staying?
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Slow-motion murder.
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Shit. That reminds me of someone else.
Think, man, think, who is it?
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Even if they get the paperwork perfect there would be other ways to make sure they don’t get elected.
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If only a certain orange hued rapist would criticize Putin.
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I don’t subscribe to not speaking ill of the dead, but death does provide an opportunity to rethink some things about people. Sometimes, bad opinions are not caused by what somebody has done, but by an apprehension of what they might do in the future. For aspiring politicians like Navalny, the issue is what they might do given power, and knowing his Russian nationalism and all its attendant bigotry, it’s true that, as president, he probably would have been just a somewhat different flavor of imperialist than his predecessors, not a liberal democrat. But that is no longer even a theoretical possibility.
What Navalny did do was lead the closest thing to a political opposition and a free media that Russia has seen in over a decade. His campaigning in various elections and exposés of corruption certainly stirred up a lot of political consciousness among Russians. In contrast, I think that the more explicitly nationalistic and racist commentary he did back when he was less prominent was largely preaching to the choir - I doubt many people became more racist because of his rants (casual racism towards the ethnicities of former and present imperial subjects is, unfortunately, very much the norm in Russia).
I think that with Navalny also dies the hope of political change in Russia by democratic means. The current regime will carry on until, sooner or later, it will collapse violently.
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