JRL NEWSWATCH: “With Navalny’s death, Russia’s opposition loses its last leader” – Christian Science Monitor
“Many in the West saw Alexei Navalny as the Russian opposition’s most promising challenger to Vladimir Putin. His death in prison on Friday brings a tragic end to a struggle the Kremlin had already largely contained.”
“Alexei Navalny, Russia’s best-known and most indefatigable Kremlin opposition figure[,] … died in an Arctic penal colony Friday under as yet unknown circumstances …. [] Navalny’s life was often a sharp illustration of the hopes, frustrations, and limits faced by the first post-Soviet generation under the nearly 2 1/2 decades of … Putin’s rule. … [P]ush[ing] the limits[,] [h]e enjoyed some unusual successes, and was punished in ways both predictable – as through the Kremlin-controlled legal system – and bizarre, such as via his 2020 poisoning with an exotic nerve agent and now his sudden untimely death. Very little is known about [] Navalny’s demise, which according to prison officials happened quickly after he returned from a walk in the maximum-security prison above the Arctic Circle known as Polar Wolf …. notorious for its harsh punishment regime, including solitary confinement …. [H]e was a relatively young and healthy man, and there had been few indications of ill health. … It remains unclear what [] Navalny’s legacy will be, as he joins a list of Putin opponents who have met grisly and often inexplicable ends over the past two decades. …”
Click here for: “With Navalny’s death, Russia’s opposition loses its last leader; Many in the West saw Alexei Navalny as the Russian opposition’s most promising challenger to Vladimir Putin. His death in prison on Friday brings a tragic end to a struggle the Kremlin had already largely contained.” – Christian Science Monitor: Fred Weir