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Words: Julian O'ShaughnessyProducer: Louise Starkey
How anti-Putin crusader Alexei Navalny has remained defiant
He's been arrested at countless protests, been partially blinded after toxic chemicals were hurled in his face, almost died after being poisoned in Siberia, and was sentenced to almost a decade in a Russian maximum security prison.
Yet, somehow, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny keeps smiling.
The 45-year-old lawyer, who rose from obscurity to become Vladimir Putin's biggest domestic opponent, has been exposing Kremlin corruption since 2008.
His campaign to dislodge Russia's ruthless dictator has inspired unprecedented street protests; at their height these involved tens of thousands of people marching through Moscow chanting, "Putin is a thief."
Navalny has made political activism fashionable, convincing a generation of previously apathetic Russians they had the power to bring about positive change.
He's also made stark statements online, reaching millions worldwide, like alleging Putin is the secret owner of a vast and spectacularly gaudy palace on the Black Sea coast.
Putin dislikes him so much, he allegedly ordered his FSB security service to kill him with Novichok, the banned Soviet-era nerve agent, and then locked him up when he had the audacity not only to survive but to return to Russia.
Navalny's latest reason for being in the spotlight? He went on trial on charges of embezzling 356 million roubles ($5.5 million) in donations to his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in February.
Moscow accused him of failing to spend the public's money on investigating Putin and his notoriously crooked inner circle, a bizarre claim that highlighted the Kremlin's ­willingness to twist reality to suit its own ends.
Navalny was tried inside the grim Penal Colony No 2 near Moscow, where he has been incarcerated since February 2021, when he was sentenced to two and a half years on separate fraud charges.
Western governments and human rights groups, as well as Navalny and his supporters, say all the charges against him are politically motivated and aimed at stifling his attempts to challenge Putin at the ­ballot box.
Swipe up for a deep-dive into Navalny's past and future as Russia's best-known opposition figure.																															

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