Navalny’s friends knew he was willing to become a martyr if that’s what it took to stand up to Putin.
Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.
Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.
Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.
Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.
Be careful who you praise:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-evolution-of-alexey-navalnys-nationalism
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/16/obit-navalny-putins-archenemy-and-anti-corruption-champion
Better than Putin. Navalny was at least a step in the right direction, despite his many flaws.
Better in the sense that there were Nazis less crazy than Hitler? Dude supported the invasion and annexation of part of Georgia, and said Russia shouldn’t give back Crimea to Ukraine in 2014.
He apologized later, but when he was running for president he was still a bad dude.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
What does Navalny have to do with Adolf and his Nazis?
Do you have a better Russian candidate in mind? Should we just let Putin take the reigns until a Russian Ghandi presents himself?
How is a Nazi a “step in the right direction”? There is a lot of opposition to Putin that’s worth supporting, Nazism isn’t one of them
In the same way that Biden is preferable to Trump. Biden is far from perfect, has lukewarm political leanings, only advances soft-left policies to better his own election chances and keeps a cop as a vp.
But Trump is an actual war mongering lunatic wannabe fascist. Sometimes it’s about the lesser evil.
Yes, you could say there are plenty of people more worth supporting than these two old farts, but none of them are on the ballot are they?
It’s that situation with Russia. Putin is an actual, proven warmonger who kills his own countrymen to hold on to power. Someone who doesn’t do either of those things and respects the will of the people is a step up, regardless of their politics, because that person can be voted out.
A lot of people on the internet think there’s an electable Abraham Lincoln instead of what the reality is
You’re only saying that because you know what Putin is like in power, with his racist remarks and Nazi affiliations you don’t even know how worse it could have been with Navalny
What makes you think he was a Nazi? I really hate how watered down the word Nazi is these days. You’re being hyperbolic.
He compared the people from the region of Caucasus to cockroaches who should be shot and had skinhead and neonazi affiliations.He also supported the invasion of Georgia in 2008, comparing Georgians to rodents. He regularly attended marches of a racist which the slogan is “Russia for ethnic russians”, posted a video where he called for deportations of immigrants…
It’s not a case of exaggeration, he was anti Putin because he wanted a racist in power.
“Navalny released YouTube videos in which he likened Islamic militants to cockroaches, called for the deportation of immigrant workers, and vowed to defend the rights of ethnic Russians in Russia.”
This is a pretty mainstream view for a lot of countries.
Anti immigration doesn’t mean you’re a racist.
For context on militants: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamil_Basayev
I’m not sure if you’re right or wrong. We are talking about comments made over 15 years ago.
Let me put it to you this way - would you rather Putin or Navalny in charge of Russia?
Obviously Navalny.
Kadirov’s troops still exist. After killing russians in Russia they did some killing ukrainians in Ukraine, but I think they are back to killing russians too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qucpwhtWFjk
It’s still on his Youtube channel. He even shoots a woman in hijab in it! But all his useful idiots will ask you to ignore these dog-whistles. This is of course from back in the day when he was the co-funder of the ultranationalist party National Russian Liberation Movement, that among other things wanted South Ossetia and Abkhazia be made independent from Georgia alá Donbas.
No?.. How? He didn’t even create his channel until mayor campaign. This video was made years before that?
Where?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=qucpwhtWFjk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Navalny: *talks about how terrible for Russia Kadirov’s personal army is*
Americans: He must be a racist!
Kadirov’s personal army: *Joins war in Ukraine. On Putin’s side.*
Americans: Navalny is the worst!
It is interesting way to rephrase his “Crimea is not a sandwich with sausage to return it back and forth”. For context in 2014 propaganda was talking about annexation as “returning” Crimea to Russia.