Long opposed to exile, Alexei Navalny dies a prisoner in a dark and dangerous Russia

Perhaps he might have been able to coordinate from abroad a powerful anti-war movement. Instead he is silenced for ever

For years, Alexei Navalny remained clear on a key message: he was a Russian opposition politician and he was determined to stay in Russia. Exile, he believed, would lead to political irrelevance, and calling on Russians to oppose Vladimir Putin from the safety of the west would mark him as a hypocrite.

Navalny stuck to this belief as the political climate in Russia deteriorated and the space for dissent narrowed ever further, and even after he was poisoned with novichok in 2020, leading to his ill-fated decision to return early the next year.