Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been declared missing by his lawyers and allies just days after Vladimir Putin announced he would run for a fifth presidential term next year.

Mr Navalny, 47, who is serving a 19-year-term on charges of extremism, was due to appear in court on Monday via videolink but did not show up, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said.

His lawyers said they have not been able to contact him since last Tuesday and that his whereabouts are now unknown.

The Russian opposition figure has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned from Germany having recovered from a nerve agent poisoning attempt that he blamed on the Kremlin.

  • @SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    831 year ago

    I still don’t understand why he committed suicide-by-Putin.

    Did he really have more influence as a martyr in prison than a free man in exile?

    • @NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      511 year ago

      I think there were two choices: stay out of Russia and be dodging Putin assassination attempts the rest of his life, or return to Russia and hope his arrest and treatment spark real change/protest/revolt in Russia.

      He gambled on the latter and it did not work out in his favor.

    • Chainweasel
      link
      fedilink
      English
      43
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      We’re talking about him aren’t we? If he were a free man in exile, what are the odds you’d be reading his name this morning?

      • @TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        371 year ago

        He could be feeding quotes to the news every single day and the western media would eat it like cereal. I believe he would have way more impact if he didn’t gave up.

      • @chitak166@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        51 year ago

        If he were a free man in exile, what are the odds you’d be reading his name this morning?

        Prolly about as often as we hear Snowden.

    • @SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Puticide has become a real epidemic in Russia. There are calls for the government to do more to combat it but there has been little response even though data suggests a steady increase since Putin took office.

  • The Snark Urge
    link
    fedilink
    English
    641 year ago

    I wish more Russians would have gone to bat for him. Russia needs regime change.

    • @jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      401 year ago

      Russia has spent the last 500 years bouncing around between malevolent autocrats. Hell, Kruschev was one of the more “sane” heads of state for which he was rewarded by being forced into “retirement.”

      The only way there will be a regime change is if the current regime is burned to the ground and then there’s no guarantee that what comes next will be better. I’m not even sure what will happen when Putin finally kicks the bucket which will likely open a massive power vacuum.

      There’s a need for change but it would be naive to think that the path to it would be painless. It won’t.

      • @agent_flounder@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        161 year ago

        I mean they burned the aristocracy to the ground and then ended up with Lenin then Stalin et al… I’m not super hopeful for them.

          • @DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            English
            11 year ago

            Anyone that thinks the Marxists were worse than the Tsars is just ignorant.

            Anyone that thinks Putin is worse than (at least a couple of) the Marxists is ignorant.

            Give them another eighty years and they’ll have figured out this “liberty” thing.

        • @Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          211 year ago

          Gorbachev was a realist who saw the start of the USSR crumbling and falling behind, and acted. He’s cursed for the reforms and presiding over the collapse, but rolling tanks into Eastern Europe circa 1989 wasnt going to have the same effect as Hungary in ‘56. The empire was dying, and he sought to protect what was most important - historic Russia and the Muscovy rule.

      • The Snark Urge
        link
        fedilink
        English
        101 year ago

        I don’t particularly care who Russians elect, but I would rather they have real elections.

  • plz1
    link
    fedilink
    English
    261 year ago

    I really want to believe a rag-tag team of supporters broke him out of prison, and are planning a massive election effort to get him in and Putin out. I know it’s fantasy, but don’t tread on my dreams.

    • @Rakonat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      While his treatment is appalling, Navalny isn’t that far from Putin on the spectrum and things wouldn’t be that different if the roles were reversed.

      • @Mistic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        111 year ago

        You’d be surprised how much changes from sole rotation of personnel.

        Mind you, people wouldn’t be calling Putin a tyrant if he left after his second term. Yet he didn’t, that mofo rigged the system in his favour during that presidency, and… well, you know the rest.

        Rotation is unimaginably more important than actual personas.

      • @CeruleanRuin
        link
        English
        61 year ago

        Incremental change is often the best we can hope for in this world.

  • Ludwig van Beethoven
    link
    fedilink
    English
    221 year ago

    If you want ice scraped off the pavement in russia, just write Навальный [Naval’nyy] on it.

    • @Mistic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Can confirm, surprisingly effective.

      Icy roads is a huge issue that often gets ignored or insufficiently addressed in Russia.

  • Scott
    link
    fedilink
    English
    181 year ago

    Ah so “missing” is a new term for gulag

    • @Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      They find him and it’ll obviously be a suicide like Gary Webb’s. Two shots to his head Two weeks before he exposed the CIA for smuggling Cocaine into the country in court. So yeah, he was probably ordering it off the Darknet to make it happen.

  • AutoTL;DRB
    link
    English
    71 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been declared missing by his lawyers and allies just days after Vladimir Putin announced he would run for a fifth presidential term next year.

    He has since been handed three prison terms and spent months in isolation in a penal colony in the Vladimir region east of Moscow for alleged minor infractions.

    Mr Navalny’s aide, Lyubov Sobol, said last week that she feared the relocation to a special security penal colony was linked to the start of Putin’s presidential election campaign.

    Bill Browder, a US financier who was formerly the largest foreign investor in Russia before being banned from re-entering the country by Putin, said the news of Mr Navalny’s disappearance was “alarming and disturbing”.

    The Russian autocrat announced his widely expected decision to run after a stage-managed Kremlin awards ceremony, where war veterans pleaded with him to seek re-election.

    Igor Girkin, an ultranationalist who had recently been critical of Putin and who had stated his intention to run for the presidency before being arrested, also had his pre-trial detention extended by six months on Thursday.


    The original article contains 742 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!