Navalny joins a long list of dead Putin foes as the Kremlin stamps out Russia's opposition

The death of Alexei Navalny deals a severe blow to Russia’s opposition, which President Vladimir Putin has ruthlessly silenced.

The circumstances surrounding  the death of the outspoken critic while in jail remain unclear, but blame will undoubtedly center on the Kremlin, which has a long history of eliminating its adversaries.

The death of the 47-year-old leaves a gaping hole in the opposition movement, with its remaining leaders either in prison or in exile as a result of a crackdown not seen since the Soviet era.

Over the years, Navalny was poisoned, then jailed and has now died. He is just the latest high-profile example of the Kremlin’s approach.

“The question was really how long he would survive, rather than whether he would be allowed to live,” said Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

Russia has urged the United States and its allies not to rush to conclusions, criticizing the “rabid” response of those like President Joe Biden who pointed the finger at Putin. But anyone familiar with how the Kremlin operates will have “been left with little doubt” about who was to blame, Giles told NBC News.

War in Ukraine and a crackdown at home

Russia has been recast over the past two years, as the Kremlin waged war in neighboring Ukraine.

The war was initially met with some protests inside Russia, but draconian legislation enacted within days of the invasion enabled the arrest of dissenters, many of whom ended up behind bars. Russian independent media fled the country, fearing persecution.

The war continues to fuel some dissent at home, with wives of mobilized soldiers fighting to return their men from the front lines, and people lining up to support antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin, who was subsequently barred from running in next month’s presidential election.

But in reality, most public critics still in Russia have been locked up.

Until Friday, Navalny was the most high-profile of these figures, his stoic and humorous presence from an Arctic prison offering opposition supporters an occasional glimpse of the man they might still have hoped to rally around.

navalny joins a long list of dead putin foes as the kremlin stamps out russia's opposition

Alexei Navalny speaks during an interview with AFP at the office of his Anti-corruption Foundation (FBK) in Moscow on Jan. 16, 2018. (Mladen Antonov / AFP via Getty Images file)

The Kremlin has denied ever poisoning Navalny, and Russian authorities have said his death would be investigated.

But his harsh treatment in prison was at best evidence of a “deliberate indifference” from Putin, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the founder and head of the political analysis firm R.Politik.

“Russian penal institutions inflict profound and lasting physical and psychological harm on inmates, effectively maiming their lives,” she said in a post on X.

Concern will now turn to some of the other high-profile opposition figures imprisoned in recent years.

Ilya Yashin, a municipal politician and supporter of Navalny, was sentenced to 8 ½ years in late 2022 accused of spreading fakes about Russia’s military in Ukraine, a charge increasingly being used to put Kremlin opponents behind bars. Yashin has been outspoken about the war and critical of Putin’s regime for years.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., a former journalist and prominent Putin critic who claims he was poisoned twice by the Kremlin, spoke out against the war in Ukraine and lobbied for tougher Western sanctions. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail last April — the harshest sentence imposed on a political opponent since the invasion — on charges including treason that he says are politically motivated. The case drew comparisons to a Stalin-era show trial.

Shootings, poison and plane crashesKara-Murza was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, once considered the leader of Russia’s opposition and one of Putin’s fiercest critics. Nemtsov was shot dead in 2015, just a few feet away from the Kremlin.

His murder sent shock waves through Russian society and the opposition scene, with an annual march held in Moscow to mark the killing. Several people were convicted in his murder, but his supporters say those who ordered his killing were never found.

navalny joins a long list of dead putin foes as the kremlin stamps out russia's opposition

The site where late Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was fatally shot on a bridge near the Kremlin in central Moscow. Nemtsov was one of President Vladimir Putin’s loudest critics until he was shot and killed on Feb. 27, 2015. (Alexander Nemeno / AFP via Getty Images file)

Years earlier, renowned journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down outside her Moscow apartment. Politkovskaya made her name reporting on Russia’s war in Chechnya in the early years of Putin’s rule. Her murder in 2006 sounded an early alarm bell for reporters in Russia about the risks of challenging the Kremlin’s narrative.

Putin has also earned a reputation for silencing people who were once loyal or even part of the regime, but have since gone rogue.

Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash last year, just months after leading his Wagner Group forces in an aborted mutiny against the Kremlin. His short-lived rebellion, sparked by disagreements about the war in Ukraine, briefly shook Putin’s authority, and his death was widely viewed as revenge and a warning to other potential challengers. No investigative findings were released after the fiery crash, which also killed 9 other people.

In 2018, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in the U.K. with a nerve agent believed to be the same Novichok poison later used on Navalny. Widely seen as a botched Kremlin assassination attempt, the operation saw Skripal survive and landed two alleged Russian intelligence agents in the global spotlight. Putin later called Skripal a “scumbag” who had betrayed his motherland.

The Skripal incident came 12 years after another high-profile case of alleged Kremlin vengeance abroad.

Two Russians allegedly poisoned former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of Putin who had fled to the U.K.. A public inquiry found that Putin probably approved the murder of the 44-year-old, who was poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 while drinking green tea at a hotel in London.

navalny joins a long list of dead putin foes as the kremlin stamps out russia's opposition

Former Russian Agent Poisoned In London (Natasja Weitsz / Getty Images file)

Surviving in exile 

Some high-profile Putin foes have long lived in exile.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon, served 10 years in jail after falling foul of the Kremlin. He was pardoned by Putin in 2013, but has since turned into a vocal critic of the regime. He has been in self-exile since then, and is often vilified by Russian propaganda.

Khodorkovsky has been calling on Russians to stand up against the war and use the upcoming election as a form of protest. After news of Navalny’s death Friday, he called for people to write Navalny’s name on their ballots.

But it remains unclear just how much space there is for such protests in Russia.

Navalny’s allies have been scattered across the world, most of them forced to leave Russia after organizations linked to the politician were banned as extremist. Independent media outlets are now operating from places like Latvia, Turkey and elsewhere across the region.

navalny joins a long list of dead putin foes as the kremlin stamps out russia's opposition

People demonstrate and pay their respect for late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, at the monument for victims of political repressions in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Feb. 16, 2024. (Petras Malukus / AFP via Getty Images)

On Russia’s exiled news channel TV Rain, Navalny’s death was reported by a journalist with tears flowing from his eyes. And people laid flowers in tribute to Navalny at memorials set up across the country for the victims of political repression.

But despite his singular fame, Navalny was not a lone figure of hope within Russia’s “relatively tiny opposition,” said Giles, from Chatham House. “Nevertheless, the symbolism is important. And Navalny was certainly a figurehead for those who stood in opposition to Putin,” Giles said.

There are few now left.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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