Navalny’s Mandela hopes assassinated

Alexei Navalny wanted to be the Nelson Mandela of Russia but ­instead has become its Martin ­Luther King, says a prominent Putin critic.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny inside a glass cell during a court hearing in Moscow on February 2021. Picture: AFP

Alexei Navalny wanted to be the Nelson Mandela of Russia but ­instead has become its Martin ­Luther King, says prominent Putin critic Bill Browder.

The British-American financier, the largest foreign investor in Russia before being hounded out, said there was no doubt President Vladimir Putin wanted ­Navalny dead to send a message before next month’s elections: “The consequence of opposition is death.”

Mr Browder, who has round-the-clock protection in London, urged the West to keep a focus on the remaining political prisoners in Russia and strive to have them released.

“I think that Navalny originally went back to Russia thinking that he would be arrested but he would sit in jail and might eventually be the Nelson Mandela of Russia coming out of jail and leading when Putin and his regime collapsed,” Mr Browder said.

“Now his legacy is going to be the Martin Luther King of Russia, the fighter against the regime who martyred himself to better Russia.

“Losing Navalny takes away a really viable alternative to Putin and what this does, is not only getting rid of one political leader but it sends shockwaves through anybody who has any sense of opposition to Putin that the consequence of that opposition is death.

“Putin tried to kill him in 2020 with novichok and he failed, and Putin has clearly wanted him dead ever since. Now Putin has succeeded. This is a Putin-organised assassination of a political rival in plain sight.”

Alexei Navalny seen on video in his first court appearance after being transfered to the Arctic prison.

Mr Browder said he was in shock but not surprised.

“The fact that he’s been alive since he was in prison is actually what surprised me,” he said.

“Putin is such a scared little man. I would have thought that he would have killed him much earlier. But Putin wanted him dead and now he is.”

For Mr Browder, history has repeated itself. After his Hermitage Capital Management offices in Moscow were raided in 2007, he hired forensic accountant Sergei Magnitsky to investigate, discovering that his company’s assets had been re-registered and used to carry out huge financial scams.

Magnitsky was arrested and died after 11 months in police custody, a few days short of the year-long limit on detention without trial.

As for an enduring legacy for Navalny, Mr Browder said: “At this point, the most immediate thing is for the West to try to find a way to do a prisoner swap for the rest of the political prisoners.”

He named several figures serving harsh sentences for opposing the war in Ukraine, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, an activist sentenced to 25 years for treason last April, the longest political sentence since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mr Browder said Navalny’s death would be spun by the authorities but he believed Russians generally knew what was really going on.

The Times