Alexei Navalny

Navalny founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation in 2011 and used social media to publish investigations into officials close to power, earning suspended sentences for embezzlement in 2013 and 2014 that barred him from the 2018 presidential race. In August 2020 he was poisoned with Novichok and evacuated to Berlin; an investigation pointed to Federal Security Service agents, and Navalny accused Putin directly. He returned to Russia in January 2021, was detained on arrival, and saw his suspended sentence converted to over two and a half years as mass protests broke out. His organisations were declared extremist and shut down, and in March 2022 he received nine more years in what Amnesty International called a sham trial, followed by another 19 years on extremism charges in August 2023. He went missing from prison in December 2023, resurfaced in an Arctic colony, and in February 2024 Russian authorities reported he had died.