Alexei Navalny

Alexei Navalny was born on 4 June 1976 in Butyn, Moscow Oblast, in the Russian SFSR of the Soviet Union. His mother, Lyudmila Ivanovna Navalnaya, is Russian, originally from Zelenograd in Moscow. His father, Anatoly Ivanovich Navalny, is Ukrainian, from Zalissia, a village near the Belarus and Ukraine border that was later relocated because of contamination from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

He grew up in Obninsk, Kaluga Oblast, and until the age of eight spent his summers with his father's parents in Zalissia, where he became proficient in Ukrainian. He identified as half Russian and half Ukrainian. His parents have run a basket-weaving factory in Kobyakovo, Vologda Oblast, since 1994.

Navalny finished Kalininets secondary school in 1993. He earned a law degree from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in 1998, then studied securities and exchanges at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, graduating in 2001. In 2010, on the recommendation of Garry Kasparov, Yevgeniya Albats and Sergey Guriev, he was selected for the Yale World Fellows program at Yale University, where he studied political science and world affairs.

From 1998 Navalny worked as a corporate lawyer for Russian companies. He became an advocate in Kirov Oblast in 2009 and transferred to the Moscow bar in 2010, losing his advocate status in 2013 after the Kirovles verdict.

He joined Yabloko in 2000, joined the Moscow regional council in 2002 and served as chief of staff of the Moscow branch from 2004 to 2007. He also co-founded the youth movement DA! (Democratic Alternative), which ran public political debates. In December 2007 he was expelled from Yabloko after calling for its leadership to resign and over his nationalist views and participation in the Russian March.

As a blogger and minority shareholder activist he turned to exposing corruption, and in 2011 he founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). After the disputed December 2011 Duma election he was arrested at a Moscow protest and jailed for 15 days, then helped lead a rally estimated at 50,000 people on 24 December 2011. He was detained again after protests around Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency in 2012.

In 2013 he stood for mayor of Moscow for RPR-PARNAS and finished second with 27.2 percent of the vote. In November 2013 he was elected leader of the party later known as Russia of the Future. He declared a run for the 2018 presidential election in December 2016 and built a national network of campaign offices, but was barred because of his criminal record. FBK investigations such as He Is Not Dimon to You (2017), about Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and Putin's Palace (2021) reached vast online audiences and sparked nationwide protests.

On 20 August 2020 Navalny fell violently ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was placed in a coma. He was flown to the Charité hospital in Berlin, and on 2 September 2020 the German government said he had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He came out of the coma on 7 September and was discharged on 23 September.

A joint investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider, with other outlets, identified FSB operatives who had followed him for years. In December 2020 Navalny released a recording in which he posed as a security official and got a man identified as a chemical weapons specialist to describe how the poison was placed on his underwear. The European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States imposed sanctions on Russian officials.

On 17 January 2021 Navalny flew home and was detained at passport control at Sheremetyevo airport. On 19 January his team published Putin's Palace, which alleged a vast estate near Gelendzhik had been built for Putin with corrupt funds. Mass protests followed across Russia.

On 2 February 2021 a Moscow court replaced his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case with real prison time. He was sent to the Pokrov penal colony in Vladimir Oblast, where he complained of sleep deprivation and went on hunger strike in 2021 to demand proper medical care. His Anti-Corruption Foundation and regional offices were declared extremist and liquidated.

On 24 February 2022, during a new trial held inside the colony, he condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On 22 March 2022 he was sentenced to nine years in a maximum security prison for embezzlement and contempt of court, a trial Amnesty International called a sham, and in June 2022 he was moved to IK-6 in Melekhovo. On 4 August 2023 he received a further 19 years on extremism charges. In December 2023 he disappeared from view for almost three weeks before being found on 25 December at the IK-3 special regime colony, known as Polar Wolf, in Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. He spent repeated spells in punishment cells throughout his imprisonment.

Navalny married Yulia Abrosimova, now Yulia Navalnaya, in 2000. They had a daughter, Daria, who began studying at Stanford University in 2019, and a son, Zakhar. From 1998 the family lived mainly in a three-room apartment in Maryino District in south-east Moscow. His brother Oleg Navalny was jailed for three and a half years in the Yves Rocher case.

Originally an atheist, Navalny later became a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, saying it made him feel part of something large and universal. He spoke English as well as his native Russian.

Corruption was the centre of Navalny's politics. He argued that the system built around Vladimir Putin was a kleptocracy and campaigned for free elections, an independent judiciary and accountable officials. His early career drew criticism for nationalist positions, including participation in the Russian March and remarks about migrants; Amnesty International briefly withdrew his prisoner of conscience status in 2021 over past comments before restoring it, stressing that the designation did not endorse his views. He condemned the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, warning it would bring a huge number of victims and destroyed futures, and from prison he promoted tactics such as the Noon Against Putin protest vote for the 2024 presidential election.

Navalny is remembered as the leading face of Russian opposition to Putin and as a pioneer of video investigations as a political weapon. His Putin's Palace film passed 92 million views within a week. His widow Yulia Navalnaya took up his work, leading the Anti-Corruption Foundation and, from July 2024, chairing the Human Rights Foundation. His prison memoir Patriot appeared in October 2024 and was declared extremist material in Russia in 2025. A monument to him, a bench whose red legs form the Cyrillic letter N, was unveiled in Helsinki next to the Russian embassy in 2026 on what would have been his 50th birthday, bearing his words: If I am murdered, do not give up.

Vedomosti Person of the Year 2009 and Politician of the Year 2017 and 2019. Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers (2011, 2012). Time 100 most influential people (2012, 2021). Platform of European Memory and Conscience Prize, with Oleg Navalny (2015). Boris Nemtsov Prize for Courage (2021). Moral Courage Award, Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy (2021). Knight of Freedom Award, Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2021). Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, European Parliament (2021). M100 Media Award (2021). U.S. Prize for Civil Courage (2022). He was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian members of parliament.

Navalny's main outlets were his blog, his YouTube channels and his X account. His books and writing include Opposing Forces: Plotting the New Russia (2016), a Time 100 entry on Vladimir Putin (2022) and the posthumous memoir Patriot (22 October 2024). The documentary Navalny, directed by Daniel Roher, won Best Documentary at the 76th BAFTAs and the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Oscars in 2023.

Navalny's participation in the nationalist Russian March and xenophobic remarks from the 2000s led to his expulsion from Yabloko and continued to divide liberal supporters. Russian authorities brought a long series of criminal cases against him, including Kirovles (2013), Yves Rocher (2014), embezzlement and contempt of court (2022) and extremism (2023), all of which he called politically motivated. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that his rights to a fair trial had been violated in earlier cases and in February 2021 ordered Russia to release him, which Russia refused.

On 16 February 2024 the Federal Penitentiary Service announced that Navalny had died at the IK-3 colony in Kharp after feeling unwell following a walk, and that resuscitation had failed. He was 47. His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed the death the next day. His body was returned to his mother on 24 February after a delay, and his funeral was held at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows in Moscow on 1 March 2024, followed by burial at Borisovskoye Cemetery. Supporters and Western leaders blamed the Russian state. In February 2026, at the Munich Security Conference, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands said jointly that he had been lethally poisoned by the Russian government with epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs.