* Russian regime critic and blogger (44) with millions of followers on Twitter and YouTube. Trained lawyer. Married and father of two. * Started an anti-corruption campaign in 2007 by buying into state-controlled companies in order to be able to ask critical questions at the general meetings. * Has organized a number of demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin. * Excluded from the liberal party Jabloko in 2008, where he had been active since 2000, accused of harming the party with his nationalist tendencies. * Leader of the small Partija Progressa – the Progress Party – since its creation in 2013. * Received 27 percent of the vote in the mayoral election in Moscow in September 2013. * Has been arrested and convicted of embezzlement and money laundering, charges he himself claims were politically motivated. He has also been arrested and convicted for participating in illegal demonstrations several times. * Wanted to stand as a presidential candidate and challenge Putin in the 2018 election, but the candidacy was not approved. * On 20 August last year, he became acutely ill on a passenger plane en route from Siberia to Moscow. Two days later, he was evacuated to Berlin after strong Western pressure. * Tests have shown that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. * On January 17, Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia. * He was sentenced in February to serve 2.5 years in a labor camp for breaching the reporting obligation following a suspended sentence from 2014. The sentence was based on a fraud case Navalny dismisses as fabricated. * This spring, he led a hunger strike lasting over three weeks with demands for better health care. The strike ended at the request of the doctors and after large demonstrations of support in Russia. * On April 26, a court in Moscow decided that Navalny’s foundation must stop all activities pending a legal decision on whether the foundation is extremist. * On April 30, the Navalny Foundation appeared on the extremist list of Russia’s financial monitoring service Rosfinmonitoring. * On 16 February 2024, the prison authorities in the Yamal-Nenets region, where Navalny has been imprisoned, announced that he has died. They state that he lost consciousness after a walk and died. (Source: NTB)
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