Alexei Navalny

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny was born in Butyn, west of Moscow, and graduated with degrees in law and financial securities. Beginning in the late 2000s, Navalny utilized forensic public accounting and the power of digital media to investigate grand corruption within state-owned corporations. In 2011, he founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which produced meticulously documented visual investigations uncovering secret palace estates, offshore networks, and illicit wealth amassed by Russia's ruling elite.

Navalny mobilized unprecedented nationwide youth protest movements and ran a transformative grassroots campaign for Mayor of Moscow in 2013, winning 27% of the vote despite an official media blackout. Barred from challenging Putin in the 2018 presidential election, he devised the 'Smart Voting' electoral strategy to consolidate opposition ballots against ruling party candidates, dramatically reshaping regional politics.

In August 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade Novichok nerve agent while traveling in Siberia. Airlifted in a coma to the Charité Hospital in Berlin, he survived and conducted an undercover investigation that duped an FSB operative into admitting how the toxin was applied. Fully aware of his impending arrest, Navalny flew back to Moscow in January 2021. Detained immediately at passport control, he was subjected to politically fabricated sentences totaling more than three decades. Transferred to the remote Polar Wolf penal colony in Kharp within the Arctic Circle, Navalny remained defiant and cheerful in messages to the world until his death in detention on 16 February 2024.